Nursing students' perspectives of unethical teaching behaviors

This preliminary study set out to collect free response data from nursing students about the nature of unethical teaching behaviors they had encountered in the classroom or clinical setting. Senior nursing students enrolled in three baccalaureate nursing programs were used as subjects. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Unethical teaching behaviors, as described by the subjects, were classified according to three major ethical principles that had been violated: Respect for persons; Justice; and Beneficence. Results revealed that the largest number of unethical teaching behaviors involved violations of respect for students. Findings from this initial investigation will serve as the basis for the development of a structured, scaled instrument that will identify not only the types of unethical teaching behaviors that nursing students encounter, but also their frequency and the degree to which students find these behaviors problematic.