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Background: Professional values provide a road map for guiding the behaviors of nursing students during practice and are considered standards for acceptable actions during the provision of nursing care. Nursing educators play a vital role in helping their students embrace professional values in their future career., Purpose: This study was designed to assess and compare professional values among Jordanian and Palestinian undergraduate nursing students., Methods: In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 182 Jordanian and 353 Palestinian nursing students completed the Nurses Professional Values Scale-Revised (NPVS-R), which covers five domains (caring, trust, justice, activism, and professionalism)., Results: The mean age of the participants was 22.5 years, and most (56.6%) were female. The mean total score for the NPVS-R was 3.85, with the "justice" dimension receiving the highest mean score (4.07) and the "activism" dimension receiving the lowest mean score (3.63). The differences in mean NPVS-R total and dimension scores between the Jordanian and Palestinian students were not statistically significant., Conclusions: The results of this study support that Jordanian and Palestinian undergraduate nursing students have an acceptable level of professional values, with the NPVS-R justice domain scoring relatively high and the NPVS-R activism domain scoring relatively low. The authors hope that the results of this study encourage nursing educators to continue improving professional values among their students, especially with regard to the relatively low-rated dimensions., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Aim: To investigate the perception of undergraduate nursing students in different countries in the Middle East about caring., Design: A cross-sectional, descriptive, comparative design., Methods: A total of 1,582 nursing students from six different countries in the Middle East completed the Caring Dimensions Inventory., Results: The total mean score of caring was 138.8 (± 15.8), indicating a high level of caring. The highest mean score was for nursing students from Egypt (M = 145.37 ± 15.97), whereas the lowest was for nursing students from Palestine (M = 135.36 ± 13.48). The caring perception was more significant for female students than male students, and no significant correlation was found between students' ages and caring scores., Conclusions: The high level of caring among nursing students reflects the involvement of caring behaviour in the nursing curricula, which motivates nursing schools to continue stressing the importance of caring and to enhance this behaviour among their graduates., Patient or Public Contribution: Improving the students' caring competencies as recommended by the study will influence the caregiving quality in the future that will be reflected in nurse-patient caring relationships and raise the patients' and public satisfaction with nursing care., (© 2022 The Authors. Nursing Open published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Introduction: Hypertension is a major health concern, especially in low-income countries. Nonadherence and poor or no persistence in adhering to hypertension treatment regimens result in uncontrolled high blood pressure, increasing rates of mortality and morbidity, and preventable healthcare costs. The aim of this study was to assess the level of adherence and barriers to treatment regimens among hypertensive patients living in the Gaza Strip, Palestine., Methods: A convenience sample of 648 participants completed the Hill-Bone Compliance to High Blood Pressure Therapy Scale. The great majority of participants ( n  = 521, 80.4%) was highly adherent to their treatment regimen, 123 participants (18.98%) were classified as moderately nonadherent, and 4 (0.62%) participants were classified as highly nonadherent to their hypertension treatment regimen. Participants of this study showed the highest adherence rate to the domain of medication adherence (mean of 1.42 out of 4) followed by appointment keeping (mean 1.8), while they were least adherent to diet (mean of 2.18). The greatest three barriers to adherence to the recommended treatment regimen reported by participants were inability to exercise, inability to resist fast and fried food, and inability to keep themselves away from salty foods., Conclusion: Overall adherence to medication in Gaza was surprisingly good in patients with a diagnosis of hypertension for at least one year. However, adherence to lifestyle advice or dietary regimes remains poor. A combination of interventions using low-cost mobile technology, combined with face-to-face interventions by healthcare professionals, can be applied to improve adherence to hypertension treatment regimens in order to reduce the consequences of uncontrolled blood pressure., Competing Interests: The authors of this study declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Nasser Ibrahim Abu-El-Noor et al.)

Background: Providing safe care helps to reduce mortality, morbidity, length of hospital stay and cost. Patient safety is highly linked to attitudes of health care providers, where those with more positive attitudes achieve higher degrees of patient safety. This study aimed to assess attitudes of nurses working in governmental hospitals in the Gaza-Strip toward patient safety and to examine factors impacting their attitudes., Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study with a convenient sample of 424 nurses, working in four governmental hospitals. The Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III, a validated tool consisting of 29 items that assesses patient safety attitudes across nine main domains, was used., Results: Nurses working in governmental hospitals showed overall only slightly positive attitudes toward patient safety with a total score of 3.68 on a 5-point Likert scale, although only 41.9% reported receiving patient safety training previously. The most positive attitudes to patient safety were found in the domains of 'working hours as a cause of error' and 'team functioning' with scores of 3.94 and 3.93 respectively, whereas the most negative attitudes were found in 'importance of patient safety in the curriculum' with a score of 2.92. Most of the study variables, such as age and years of experience, did not impact on nurses' attitudes. On the other hand, some variables, such as the specialty and the hospital, were found to significantly influence reported patient safety attitudes with nurses working in surgical specialties, showing more positive attitudes., Conclusion: Despite the insufficient patient safety training received by the participants in this study, they showed slightly positive attitudes toward patient safety with some variations among different hospitals and departments. A special challenge will be for nursing educators to integrate patient safety in the curriculum, as a large proportion of the participants did not find inclusion of patient safety in the curriculum useful. Therefore, this part of the curriculum in nurses' training should be targeted and developed to be related to clinical practice. Moreover, hospital management has to develop non-punitive reporting systems for adverse events and use them as an opportunity to learn from them.