Attitudes of the nurses working in pediatric clinics towards children’s rights

Objective: Pediatric nurses have significant responsibilities in adopting and implementation of the children’s rights. This study was conducted to determine the attitudes of nurses working in pediatric service towards children’s rights.

Method: The study was carried out with 104 nurses working in pediatric services of a university hospital and state hospital and agreeing to participate in the research. The data of the study were gathered with Descriptive Information Form and Questionnaire for Measuring Attitudes towards Children’s Rights. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis and correlation analysis were used in the analysis of data.

Results: The average age of the nurses in the study is 32.10±7.69, 97.1% are female, 62.5% have bachelor’s degree, 59.6% are married and 51% have children. The work experience of 57.7% of the nurses and the experience of 80.8% of those in pediatric clinic range from 0 to 10 years. Of pediatric nurses, 77.9% stated that they heard about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 52.9% said they have no idea as to whether our country has signed this convention, and 96.2% reported they pay attention to the children’s rights and they have to take active role on the children’s rights. The Questionnaire for Measuring Attitudes towards Children’s Rights average scores of the nurses are 27.16±5.34. When Questionnaire for Measuring Attitudes towards Children’s Rights average scores were examined according to descriptive characteristics of the nurses, the difference between them was found to be statistically insignificant (p>0.05).

Conclusions: It might be concluded that the attitudes of pediatric nurses towards children’s rights are positive. This study contributes the nurses working in pediatric clinics to pay attention towards children’s rights in the practices of treatment and care for children.