Introduction: Cultural differences among nurses affect the way they work. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the correlation between cultural intelligence and work ethic and its relationship with demographic characteristics in nurses of Golestan Social Security hospitals.
Methods: This descriptive-correlational study on social security nurses in Golestan province in 2017 was performed by simple random sampling method on 165 people. The data collection instruments included the Questionnaire of Demographic characteristic, the “Cultural Intelligence Questionnaire” and the “Occupational Work Ethical Inventory” (OWEI). The two instruments were validated by content validation and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient method. The data were analyzed using SPSS. 21.
  Results: The level of cultural intelligence is 95.42±16.95 and the work ethic of nurses is 48.97 ± 12. Spearman's correlation coefficient test did not show a significant relationship between these two variables (r = -0.03 and P = 0.61). The Yu Man Whitney test showed a significant difference between the mean sex work ethic (P = 0.03), with men having more work ethic than women.
Conclusion: Despite the high cultural intelligence of nurses, the level of work ethic is low. It also did not show a significant difference between cultural intelligence and work ethics. It is recommended that health officials and stakeholders pay special attention to educational programs due to their low professional ethics.