"Moral spaces": A feasibility study to build nurses' ethical confidence and competence

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Bioethics
• Healthcare Professional Development

Background:

• Pre-licensure nursing education often fails to adequately prepare nurses for ethical challenges, impacting their confidence and potentially leading to moral distress.
• Ethics education is crucial for building nurses' confidence in taking moral action and mitigating negative effects of moral distress in practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a nursing ethics education program.
• To assess the program's effectiveness in enhancing nurses' ethical knowledge and confidence.
• To determine the suitability of simulated case-based ethics competencies as an evaluation tool.

Main Methods:

• A prospective, longitudinal, correlational, single-cohort feasibility study was conducted.
• Registered nurses from diverse hospital settings participated in the educational program.
• Investigator-developed surveys and intervention field data, including simulated case-based ethics competencies, were used for evaluation.

Main Results:

• The program was highly feasible and acceptable, with 95% of participants completing post-program surveys.
• Participants reported increased ethics knowledge, confidence, and skills in providing ethical care.
• Simulated ethics competencies were perceived as appropriate and sufficiently challenging by most participants.

Conclusions:

• The novel ethics education program successfully enhanced hospital-based nurses' ethical knowledge and confidence.
• Simulated case-based ethics competencies are an appropriate and effective evaluation method for nursing ethics education.
• Further research, such as a randomized controlled trial, is recommended to substantiate the program's value.