Background:This article combines foundational and empirical aspects of healthcare education and develops a framework for teaching ethical theories inspired by pragmatist learning theory and recent work on the concept of moral resilience. It describes an exemplary implementation and presents data from student evaluation.Objectives:After a pilot implementation in a regular ethics module, the feasibility and acceptance of the novel framework by students were evaluated.Research design:In addition to the regular online module evaluation, specific questions referring to the teaching of ethical theories were (...) added using simple (yes/no) and Likert rating answer formats.Participants and research context:At the Bern University of Applied Sciences, a total of 93 students from 2 parallel sub-cohorts of the bachelor’s program in nursing science were sent the online survey link after having been exposed to the same modular contents. A total of 62% of all students participated in the survey.Ethical considerations:The survey was voluntary and anonymous. Students were free to write their name and additional comments.Findings:Students consider ethical theories—as taught within the proposed framework—as practically applicable, useful, and transferable into practice.Discussion:Teaching ethical theories within the proposed framework overcomes the shortcomings described by current research. Students do not consider the mutually exclusive character of ethical theories as an insurmountable problem.Conclusion:The proposed framework is likely to promote the effectiveness of healthcare ethics education. Inspired by pragmatist learning theory, it enables students to consider ethical theories as educative playgrounds that help them to “frame” and “name” the ethical issues they encounter in daily practice, which is seen as an expression of moral resilience. Since it does not advocate a single ethical theory, but is open to the diversity of traditions that shape ethical thinking, it promotes a culturally sensitive, ethically reflected healthcare practice. (shrink)

Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)

Providing good care requires nurses to reflect critically on their nursing practices. Ethics education must provide nurses with tools to accomplish such critical reflection. It must also create a pedagogical context in which a caring attitude can be taught and cultivated. To achieve this twofold goal, we argue that the principles of a right-action approach, within which nurses conform to a number of minimum principles, must be integrated into a virtue ethics approach that cultivates a caring attitude. Ethics education that (...) incorporates both the `critical companionship' method and the use of codes of ethics contributes positively to cultivating critical reflection by nurses. (shrink)