PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT

This paper has examined the subject of ethical knowledge and professional behaviour among student radiographers in University of Benin, Nigeria. The data were collected via standardized self-administered questionnaires and a descriptive cross-sectional survey was performed among the clinical year students (300 to 500 level) of the organizations. Purposive sampling and descriptive statistics were the choice of the study to ensure the analysis of the data by means of SPSS version 29. Findings showed that most students (78.6) displayed positive understanding of the main ethical concepts, where the informed consent (96.0% correct), patient response to refusal (98.8% correct), and autonomy (91.3% correct) were significantly high. The level of professional conduct knowledge was exceptionally good (94.0 percent good knowledge) and 99.6 percent of them have a correct understanding of the procedures in managing complaints and 99.2 percent of them understand the boundaries of their profession. There were however loopholes in the understanding of patient confidentiality nuances, where 17.1% believed that patient information would never be disclosed and in any way. Some of the common ethical questions that were posed were poor supervision (means of 1.94/4.00), poor description of procedures (means of 1.81/4.00) and not obtaining proper consent (means 1.58/4.00). It was found in the study that core ethical knowledge is present among student radiographers but specific treatments that deal with practical application of ethical concepts in clinical settings are required. Suggestions given are more ethics integration in clinical training, better supervision process, establishment of mentorship programs to address ethical choices, and establishment of an ethical culture of accountability and reporting errors.