mental health nurses considered awareness of legal issues important but they had a moderate level of legal and moral knowledge (13). In a study in Nigeria, nurses earn about three quarters of the score related to their knowledge of professional rules (14). The studies show that in different areas and according to different professional training in this area, knowledge of nurses is at different levels. Care for the elderly requires special moral and legal attention. For example, observance of ethical and legal issues in special age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer's (15, 16) and in end-oflife caring such as wills, the observance of patient privacy and spiritual attentions important and can increase Quality of caring for the elderly (17). Nurses' inadequate awareness of the ethical and legal issues of elderly patients causes physical and mental harm, impose costs, reduce the independence and even death of the patient and reduce the professional credentials of nurses (18). Nurses can raise the level of nursing care, especially in the elderly, with the knowledge of these issues. According to different statistics of nurses 'knowledge about ethical and legal issues of patient care and the lack of study in the field of care for the elderly, the researchers decided that this study was aimed at assessing nurses' awareness of ethical and legal issues related to the care of the elderly. Material and Methods This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 200 nurses working in hospitals in Kashan during 2014-2015, by simple random sampling. The sample size was calculated base on the formula 𝑛 = (𝑍1−2 ∝) 2×𝑃×(1−𝑃) 𝑑2 , taking p = 0.11 (19) and d =0/05, 150 subjects and for more accuracy 200 people were selected. The inclusion criteria were having a bachelor's degree and above, having at least one year of work experience in elderly patients' units (medical, [ Downloaded from ijethics.com on 2022-01-24 ] 2 / 7 Safa A. & Hajbagheri MA. International Journal of Ethics & Society (IJES), (2019) Vol. 1, No. 3 3 Available at: www.ijethics.com surgical, emergency) and satisfaction to participate in the study. The tool of research was a researcher-made questionnaire including three parts. The first part included demographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status, work experience, work units and employment status), history of training in the care of the elderly, history of training in professional ethics and patient rights. The second part included 25 questions of 4 options about ethical-legal issues of care for elderly patients admitted to the hospital, in two areas of the ethical issues of elderly patient care (12 questions) and legal issues of elderly patient care (13 questions). Each question had a correct answer giving one score. The maximum score of the questionnaire was 25 and the minimum score was zero. Obtaining less than half of the points in this section shows undesirable awareness obtaining a score higher than half shows the nurse's desirable awareness. The third part contains a question with seven suggested options about the most important cause of the ethical mistakes of nurses in nursing care, which was answered in a "yes" and "no" manner. The content validity approved by 10 experts and their comments were applied. Content validity coefficient (CVI) was calculated between 1-0.6 for different questions, and content validity ratio (CVR) was 0.7. Reliability of the questionnaire was 0.71 by Cronbach's alpha method. After obtaining permission from the Research Council and the Ethics Committee of Kashan University of Medical Sciences, the number of samples in each hospital was first determined based on the number of nurses in each hospital. The sample size was selected randomly from the list of nurses working in the medical, surgical and emergency care departments. In case of any person's dissatisfaction, another nurse was randomly replaced. To observe ethical principles and in order to ensure nurses' responses, they were informed of the research aims before the questionnaire was submitted and they were assured that the information obtained would be completely confidential and their participation in the study was entirely optional and there was no need to write their name and family name. Then the