Poll: Nurses Have the Highest Honesty and Ethical Standards

In a recent poll conducted by Gallup, it was found that nurses have the highest honesty and ethical standards. Americans were asked how they rate a variety of professions on the honesty and ethics scale. Nurses have topped this list each year since 1999 (except when firefighters topped the list in 2001). Since 2005, at least 80% of Americans have said nurses have high ethics and honesty. 80% of Americans say nurses have ‘very high’ or ‘high’ standards of honesty and ethics. The professions with the lowest trust rate were members of Congress and car salespeople.

Let’s take a look a few reasons why nurses have topped this list almost every year. Nurses have continuously topped doctors each year. Is it surprising that nurses are viewed as more honest and ethical than doctors? Probably not. Nurses are the ones that patients call when they need immediate care and attention. Nurses are the ones that are continually at the patients’ side giving them treatment and care. You don’t see the doctor as often as your nurse, so it’s only natural to trust someone that is around more often. Nurses tend to form relationships with their patients. Nurses normally aren’t the ones delivering the bad news, or the stats of your prognosis.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 8-11, 2014, with a random sample of 805 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.