Background: Nursing ethics is a part of the responsibility and commitment to the nursing profession. The nurses' performance must be according to the professional principles. It seems one of the best ways to ensure performing ethical practice is increasing the nurses’ awareness and attitudes about nursing ethics codes. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between nurses’ awareness and attitude about nursing ethics codes and determine the effective factors.

Materials and methods: In this descriptive cross - sectional study, 108 nurses were selected by cluster sampling. Information was collected by a three- part questionnaire, including demographic characteristics, nursing ethics codes awareness and attitudes. Relationships between variables were estimated by Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) and independent t-test.

Results: The mean (± standard deviation) score of awareness (19.52 ±0.64) and attitude (17.71 ± 0.59) of participants were in the middle range and there was statistically significant correlation between mean score of awareness and attitude (r=0.69, p=0.01). There found higher score of attitude for married nurses, and also higher score of awareness and attitude for those have more years of work experiences (P<0.05).

Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the nurses need more and continuously education of nursing ethics codes. Therefore, it is recommended that the managers and planners pay more attention to teaching these codes, as one of the basic part in nursing education until development of the nurses' ethics codes awareness and attitudes leads to improve the quality of nursing care.

Keywords: Awareness, Attitude, Nursing ethics codes.