Abstract
Background: This study aimed to identify the components of professional ethics in health education offered by the northwestern universities of medical sciences in Iran.
Methods: This qualitative study was conducted based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 43 experts in northwestern medical universities. Purposeful and theoretical sampling method was adopted to select the samples. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
Results: Based on the semantic commonalities, 48 concepts were formed and categorized into six ethical components for implementers of the health education system under the titles of responsibility to the general public, responsibility to the profession, responsibility to employers, responsibility for providing education health, responsibility for performing research and evaluation, and responsibility for making professional preparation.
Conclusion: The Vice Chancellors for Health of Medical Universities were in charge of providing, maintaining, and promoting the health of the community, moving in this direction by planning, organizing, evaluating, and providing health services, as well as using innovative and creative methods. Improving the health of the covered community was one of the main objectives of this important unit in the community. The components of the ethical model adopted by the country’s health education system and health department of the northwestern medical universities included loyalty, responsibility, competitiveness, honesty, respect for others, respect for social values and norms, justice and fairness, empathy with others, liquidity, decisiveness, trust, cross-sectoral cooperation, observance of order, positive attitude, and commitment.
Extended Abstract
Background
Different professional groups in societies follow a special value system called professional ethics, in addition to the principles and rules of public ethics, which is universally accepted by those practicing that profession. Nowadays, a special attention is given to the ethics and ethical values by organizations obliged to develop more effective standards for ethical characteristics of human resources. The study. confirmed the existence of a gap between the current and the favourable situations for observing the standards of professional ethics. Bahrami and Mirtaheri also demonstrated that the current state of professional standards in university education was lower than the expected state. Therefore, it seems necessary to develop special ethical criteria for educational centers. Ghaffari, et al. and Saki have highlighted the need for developing principles and charters for professional educational ethics since they are prerequisites for proposing ethical models.
Methods
In this combined qualitative study, 43 specialists, including professors of health education from northwestern medical universities, were interviewed. The interviews were conducted after ensuring the coordination and reaching the agreement on the subject of the interview. The interviews lasted from 38 minutes to 55 minutes, and the average duration of them was 43 minutes. Sample interview questions included: what is the nature of ethics in health education? what moral qualities should health educators have? And what are your ethical priorities in health education? At the end of the interview, the interviewees were allowed to exprese their opinions not covered by the interview questions. The participants, selected by adopting purposive sampling and theoretical sampling methods, included 43 faculty members from Tabriz, Zanjan, Urmia, and Ardabil Universities of Medical Sciences in the second half of 2020. The interviews were continued until the data saturation was reached. Qualitative data were collected using grounded theory of 43 in-depth interviews with experts and individuals knowledgeable about the subject up to saturation stage and the final components were extracted. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the interview texts.The elements and models extracted from theoretical and research foundations in the first stage were identified by combining qualitative and exploratory methods through using in-depth semi-structured interviews with health education specialists and performing customary content analysis of the components of the professional ethics model. After collecting the data and identifying the concepts and categories, the key participants were provided with information. Then, we performed data analysis by adopting the systematic method of grounded theory through open coding, axial coding, and selective coding analysis. Afterward, we presented a logical paradigm or visual image of the developing theory, and the final model of professional ethics in the education system.
Results
In the present study, 143 primary open-source codes were extracted by coding the interview texts and performing qualitative content analysis. Based on the semantic commonalities, then 48 concepts were formed and included in three themes and six categories of ethical components for implementers in the health education system:
Category 1: Responsibility to the public
The concepts that emerged out of the interview transcriptions were: justice and fairness, respect for social values, respect for others, trustworthiness, regular altruism, honesty, truthfulness, confidentiality and learners’ honesty, respect for privacy, self-discipline, patience, and loyalty to the public.
Category 2: Responsibility for the profession
Responsibility for professional jobs and professions did not involve health misconceptions in teaching correct health-related subjects. Rather, concepts such as lack of statistics, accountablity, having expertise in health education, having taste and interest in health education, accountablility for actions and judgments, as well as creating a responsible attitude in the subject of public policy and public statements were the ones extracted from the interview texts to form the second category.
Category 3: Liability to employers
The implications of this category extracted from the interview texts highlighted the importance of lack of statistics, honesty, accountability, accountability to employers, regularity, government, health NGOs, and the private sector.
Category 4: Responsibility for providing health education
The concepts extracted from the interview texts and included in this category were: responsibility for providing health education, personal dignity, personal attitude, respect for people, and respect for high standards of moral. The true nature of the subject convinced our research team to separate education from other dimensions of the ethics and attach higher importance to it.
Category 5: Responsibility for research and evaluation
According to the interview texts, concepts such as: empowerment in research and development, using valid scientific sources, responsibility for research and evaluation, teaching, and research formed the category of responsibility for research and evaluation. The participants in the research were inclined to separate the unique features of the research and evaluation task from other dimensions of the ethics using different wording and considered it more important than other dimensions due to the true nature of the subject.
Category 6: Responsibility for vocational training
Acquiring and maintaining competence through training and professionalism, responsibility for professional preparation, avoiding inappropriate and immoral behavior towards colleagues, as well as believing in and respecting values. Several participants also reminded others about the significance of different moral characteristics and argued that regardless of all the ethical components, simply paying attention to some of the characteristics was not effective.
Conclusion
Important moral characteristics of health educators have been paid a particular research attention and been introduced as viable solutions to many immoral issues in health education, so that educators and practitioners of health education can have moral characteristics such as discipline. Honesty, adherence to standards and values, cooperation, trust, and accountability can prevent potential abuses. Vice Chancellors for Health of Medical Universities were in charge of providing, maintaining, and promoting the health of the community, which was one of the major objectives of this important unit in the community. The ethical model adopted by the country’s health education system of the health department at the northwestern medical universities had components such as loyalty, responsibility, competitiveness, honesty, respect for others, respect for social values and norms, justice and fairness, empathy with others, liquidity, decisiveness, trust, cross-sectoral cooperation, observance of order, positive attitude, and commitment.