| Nurses, who provide care for their patients act out of loyalty and obligation but also, adhere to a nursing code of ethics or core values and ideals. Nurses are educated to be compassionate and nonjudgmental. One's own ethical belief may be compromised when assigned patients that are known sex offenders. However, little is known about nurses' attitudes when caring for a sex offender. This descriptive study will describe how registered nurses respond to caring for sex offenders.;The sample for this study was composed of a random selection of 1,000 registered nurses from the Midwest state board of nursing registry that were mailed postcards inviting participation in an anonymous online survey. Sixty-eight respondents completed all questionnaire items.;The research questions guiding the study were (1) What are the attitudes of nurses towards sex offenders, (2) Are there differences among social isolation, capacity to change, blame attribution, and deviancy in nurses' scores, (3) Do nurses who have cared for a sex offender score differently than nurses who have not knowingly cared for a sex offender, and (4)? Do nurses with specific sex offender education score differently than those without specific sex offender education?;Survey Monkey(c) was the online survey tool to collect data from the participants. The data were analyzed using SPSS software to perform descriptive and t-test analysis. Overall results from the data revealed that a majority of nurses practice nonjudgmental care to all of their patients, regardless if the patient is a known sex offender. Further studies should be initiated to investigate nursing who actually work predominately with sex offenders and in forensic nursing. |
