With nurses in the spotlight more than ever, a newly released Gallup poll found that nurses top the list of most honest and ethical professions as voted by the American public.
The poll found that 76% of Americans rate nurses to have “high” or “very high” ethical and honesty standards. That’s 15 percentage points higher than the poll’s second-highest rated profession, grade-school teaching, which had 61% of the American public viewing them highly.
Spectacularly, nursing has been at the top of this poll 23 times, every year since they were added to the survey in 1999 except one. In 2001, firefighters topped the poll following the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.
“Every year, the results of this poll simply amaze me,” American Nursing Association president Jennifer Mensik Kennedy said in a news release. “For 23 years running, the American public continues to trust nurses not only as the most honest and ethical within health care, but across industries and professions.”
“This acknowledgment is an undeniable reflection of the positive impact nurses have on the patients they diligently care for and on the health care system they support,” Kennedy went on to say.
On the other hand, medical doctors fell more than 14 percentage points since 2021, after reaching a historic high of 77% in 2020. Gallup cited “declining public trust in most professions over the past quarter century.”
Lawyers, lobbyists and advertisers ranked at the bottom of the list.
On behalf of over five million nurses, Kennedy promised to “continue to vigorously advocate for meaningful policies and solutions to the issues that inhibit a healthy workplace culture and quality patient care delivery throughout 2025 and beyond.”
“What nurses do every day is nothing short of incredible,” Kennedy said in the news release.
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