Measuring moral judgement of a select group of occupational health nurses in nursing dilemmas

A·nonexperimental descriptive survey was conducted to determine the moral judgments of occupational health nurses in nursing dilemmas. The Nursing Dilemma Test (NDT) was mailed to 510 occupational health nurses in one southwestern state who were members of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses (AAOHN); 179 returned usable questionnaires. The majority of subjects studied were middle aged (mean= 45.7), held a diploma in nursing, were not certified OHNs, and had over 10 years experience practicing nursing. Typically, the OHN worked for an organization with over 500 employees and was the only nurse in the organization. Measures of central tendency, variability, t-tests, and Spearman's rho were used to analyze data. Occupational health nurses in this study ascribed more importance to principled considerations when making moral judgments than to lower moral judgment stage considerations.