Nurses are confronted daily with ethical issues while providing patient care. Hospital ethical climates can affect nurses’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, retention, and physician collaboration.

At a metropolitan academic medical center, we examined nurses’ perceptions of the ethical climate and relationships among ethical climate factors and nurse characteristics.

We used a descriptive correlational design and nurses (N = 475) completed Olson’s Hospital Ethical Climate Survey. Data were analyzed using STATA.

Approvals by the Nursing Research Council and Institutional Review Board were obtained; participants’ rights were protected.

Nurses reported an ethical climate total mean score of 3.22 ± 0.65 that varied across factors; significant differences were found for ethical climate scores by nurses’ age, race, and specialty area.

These findings contribute to what is known about ethical climate and nurses’ characteristics and provides the foundation to develop strategies to improve the ethical climate in work settings.