Background: The decision-making process should be done according to a set of rules and principles so as to be fairly understood.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify the basic principles and rules used by nurses to understand justice in nurse managers' decision-making processes based on a procedural justice model. Research design and participants: This research was a qualitative study based on directed content analysis, which was performed on a group of 15 nurses working in different hospitals in Tehran, Iran. An in-depth semi-structured interview was used as the method of data collection for this study. Ethical consideration: This research has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The respondents were informed about the aim of the study, about voluntary participation, anonymity and confidentiality.
Findings: The results of this study showed that in order to understand procedural justice, nurses use several rules, including: duties organization, managerial support, consistency, bias-suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, and ethicality.
Conclusion: Nursing leaders must consider the importance of justice rules as one of many strategies to ensure the nurses' perception of fairness in decision-making processes.
Keywords: Decision-making; justice; nurses; procedural justice; rules.