Developing case situations for ethics education in nursing

Developing cases for the clinical teaching of ethics can be extremely time-consuming. Often, the cases that are developed either represent unrealistic situations or mere technical puzzles rather than genuine ethical problems. This article describes how faculty at the University of Minnesota modified a simple, quick and inexpensive think tank technique, the Crawford Slip Method, for use with nursing educators to generate an extensive list of ethical issues within each clinical specialty. Selecting from these lists, faculty in each specialty developed one realistic nursing case situation to illustrate selected ethical issues. Faculty were asked to use the Alverno College criteria for designing a moral dilemma when writing their cases. Suggestions for adapting the cases for multiple uses are presented.