Building bridges: teaching ward-based ethics

Ethics has traditionally been taught in the 'ivory towers' of academia. Recent developments and reforms in nurse education have given ethics a prominent position in most curricula. However, the vast majority of ethics teaching continues to take place in academic departments. This approach fuels the practitioner's views that nursing is a pragmatic activity whilst ethics is a cognitive endeavour; such perspectives entrench ethics firmly in the traditional gap between theory and practice. The focus of this paper presents an argument that the teaching of ethics must be versed in clinical reality if bridges are ever to be built and the theory-practice gap crossed.