Ethics Education in Nursing: Instruction for Future Generations of Nurses

Abstract

Ethics education in nursing provides a critical foundation for addressing ethical questions that arise in the patient-provider relationship. These questions are many and often include central concerns surrounding truth-telling, informed consent, and protecting the rights and welfare of patients and families in decision making. The lack of ethics preparation at both the undergraduate and graduate level hampers nurses’ ability to work collaboratively with other team members and share their voices when ethical issues confront clinicians and their patients and families. The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of ethics education in nursing, identifying gaps in ethics education in nursing curricula, and review specific content issues within ethics curricula and future directions. We highlight the research and clinical opportunities that support ethics education, and offer innovative methods for ethics pedagogy. We also examine what we may learn from medicine. The article ends with recommendations and a conclusion to address ways to incorporate ethics inquiry in nursing curricula for educating future generations of nurses.