Curricular Approaches to Teaching Ethics in Baccalaureate Nursing Programs

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to gather information about the various curricular approaches used by baccalaureate nursing programs for teaching ethics. Specific information sought included: faculty preparation in ethics; use of an ethical framework; goals and objectives for ethics; ethics content and learning experiences included; sequencing of content and learning experiences; placement of ethics into a separate course, integrated into the curriculum, or both; identification, integration, and linkage of ethics content across the curriculum; hours of ethics content; learning resources used; who teaches ethics; and faculty experience with ethics. Beauchamp's curriculum process (1981) was used as a theoretical framework.

This study was a descriptive mail survey. The survey population was all the National League for Nursing accredited baccalaureate nursing programs in the United States. A researcher-developed semi-structured questionnaire was used, and Dillman's Total Design Method (1978) for survey research was followed. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and the chi square test was used to identify associations between variables.

The return rate of usable questionnaires was 65%. The descriptive findings reveal that although teaching ethics is valued in principle, the actual structuring and implementation of the curriculum related to ethics does not reflect as deep a commitment to teaching ethics. Attempts are being made to provide ethics education, but the lack of systematic plans for integrating ethics across the curriculum indicate that these attempts are not fully realized.

A cluster of significantly associated variables formed two distinctly different profiles of more and less structured curricular approaches to teaching ethics in baccalaureate nursing programs. The variables which formed the cluster were: recent faculty development programs, use of an ethical framework, terminal objectives related to ethics, a separate ethics course and integrating ethics versus no separate course, a systematic plan for integrating ethics content, total hours of ethics content, and learning resources used. Using these results, it is possible to identify and classify distinctly different curricular approaches to teaching nursing ethics, and to design research studies which compare the effectiveness of the different approaches.