The impact of an AI-focused ethics education program on nursing students' ethical awareness, moral sensitivity,...

The integration of Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) into healthcare is rapidly evolving, necessitating ethical preparedness among nursing students. GAI technologies present ethical challenges related to patient privacy, algorithmic bias, and informed consent, underscoring the need for structured AI ethics education in nursing curricula. This study aims to examine the impact of an ethics education program on nursing students' AI ethical awareness, moral sensitivity, attitudes, and intentions to use GAI in healthcare.

A quasi experimental, pretest‒posttest study was conducted with 115 nursing students. The participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n = 57), which received a structured AI ethics education program, or a control group (n = 58), which did not receive the intervention. The validated scales measured AI ethical awareness, moral sensitivity, attitudes, and the intention to use AI before and after the intervention.

Compared with the control group, the intervention group demonstrated a significant increase in AI ethical awareness (M = 57.28, SD = 22.28) (M = 47.43, SD = 24.04; p = .025, η² = 0.044). Moral sensitivity also showed a notable improvement in the intervention group (M = 74.33, SD = 29.93) compared with the control group (M = 60.26, SD = 22.52; p = .005, η² = 0.067). Compared with the control group, positive attitudes toward AI significantly increased postintervention (M = 39.46, SD = 11.51) (M = 23.21, SD = 11.72; p < .001, η² = 0.332), indicating a strong effect of ethics education. Furthermore, the intention to use AI technology improved significantly in the intervention group (M = 12.46, SD = 3.55) compared with the control group (M = 10.24, SD = 3.15; p = .001, η² = 0.099). However, negative attitudes toward GAI did not significantly change postintervention.

This study highlights the effectiveness of structured AI ethics education in enhancing ethical competencies among nursing students. Integrating such programs into nursing curricula is essential to prepare future nurses for ethical decision-making in AI-driven healthcare. These findings support the development of standardized ethics training modules to guide responsible AI use in clinical practice and inform future curriculum design.

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