When asked to rank members of 11 different fields, Americans rated nurses as the most honest and ethical, according to an annual Gallup poll.
This year's poll showed 80 percent of Americans rated the honesty and ethical standards of nurses as "high" or "very high."
That's 15 percentage points above the next highest rated professions, physicians and pharmacists. Sixty-five percent of Americans rated the honesty and ethical standards of those respective professions as "high" or "very high"
Lowest on the list was car salespeople, with a rating of 8 percent, and members of Congress, with a rating of 7 percent.
Nurses were first included in the Gallup poll ranking in 1999 and have topped the list ever since, with the exception of 2001, when firefighters were included due to the work they did during and after the 9/11 attacks, according to the poll.
"All nurses share the critical responsibility to adhere to the highest ethical standards in their practice to ensure they provide superior health care to patients and society," American Nurses Association President Pamela F. Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN said in a news release. "ANA is calling 2015 the Year of Ethics to highlight ethics as an essential component of everyday nursing practice and reinforce the trust patients have that nurses will protect their health and safety, and advocate on their behalf."
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