en عمومى General Original Article <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong><em>Background:</em></strong> Nursing is an ethical profession and nurses are responsible for patient care. Caring for older adults requires special attention to ethical and legal issues. Nurses&#39; unawareness in this regard would reduce patient autonomy, the quality of nursing care and finally world reduce nursing professional credentials. The aim of this study was assessing nurses&#39; awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults.<br> <strong><em>Method</em></strong><em>:</em> This study was cross-sectional descriptive&lrm;. Participants were 200 nurses that worked in Hospitals in Kashan (2014-2015).Data was collected by the researcher-made questionnaire&nbsp; including three part, personal information, questions about ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults and a question about factors related to nurses&#39; ethical mistakes. Statistical analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential statistics via SPSS 11.5 software.<br> <strong><em>Results</em></strong><em>:</em> The level of nurses&#39; awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults was undesirable. Kruskal- Wallis test showed a significant relationship between the score of nurses&#39; awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults and their academic degree (P=0.001). Mann- Whitney U test also showed a significant relationship between the score and previous training about aging (P=0.001) but there was no significant relationship between the score of nurses&#39; awareness and their gender, marital status, work experience, working unit and employment status.<br> <strong><em>Conclusion</em></strong><em>:</em> The level of nurses&#39; awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults was not satisfactory. This condition should bring attention to the retraining programs and strengthening the supervisory system.</span></div> Awareness, Older adults, Legal issues, Ethical issues 30 36 http://ijethics.com/browse.php?a_code=A-10-53-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Azade Safa azade.fazel@yahoo.com 10031947532846002118 10031947532846002118 Yes Trauma Nursing Research Center, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran Mohsen Adib Hajbagheri adib1344@yahoo.com 10031947532846002119 10031947532846002119 No Trauma Nursing Research Center, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran