American Association of Colleges of Nursing essential values: national study of faculty perceptions, practices, and plans.

A representative national sample of bachelor's-degree nurse educators (N = 697) were surveyed about the seven professional values identified by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (1986) in Essentials of College and University Education for Professional Nursing. Participants agreed that these values were representative of values nurses need to use in practice, and that educational opportunities related to these values should be included in the curriculum. Eighty-six per cent of the sample perceived that they included some or all of these values predominantly through the informal lesson plan. Esthetics was the most frequently mentioned value that was not considered in any form in the nursing curriculum. Nurse educators teaching at religious-affiliated institutions, and those who had educational preparation in values, already included these values in their formal teaching (P less than .04 and P less than .0001, respectively) and they had discussions about including them differently in the future more frequently (P less than .005 and P less than .006) than did other educators. Faculty members teaching at religious-affiliated institutions also established more plans for including these values within the curriculum than those who taught at public institutions (P less than .0004). One conclusion from this study was that values may continue to be treated differently than other nursing education content, ie, predominantly through the informal lesson plan.