| Keywords |
Ethical sensitivity; Ethical climate; Moral courage; Person-centered care; Nurses |
| Abstract |
This study aimed to examine the mediating role of moral courage in the relationships between nurses’ ethical sensitivity and person-centered care, and between ethical climate and person-centered care. A descriptive correlational design was employed with 121 nurses working in general and tertiary hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area who had at least three months of clinical experience. Data were collected from February 28 to March 9, 2026, using structured self-report questionnaires, and were analyzed using PROCESS macro v4.2 Model 4 with 5,000 bootstrapping iterations. Moral courage partially mediated the relationship between ethical sensitivity and person-centered care (direct effect: B = .183, p = .035; indirect effect: B = .120, 95% confidence interval [CI] [.049, .200]), and also partially mediated the relationship between ethical climate and person- centered care (direct effect: B = .433, p < .001; indirect effect: B = .121, 95% CI [.031, .281]). The direct effect of ethical climate was larger than that of ethical sensitivity, suggesting that organizational ethical environments exert a stronger influence on person-centered care than individual ethical competence alone. These findings indicate that enhancing person-centered care requires integrating individually focused strategies to strengthen ethical sensitivity and moral courage with organizationally focused approaches to improve ethical climate. |