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Implementation and Evaluation of a Nursing Ethics Course at Turkish Doctoral Nursing Programs

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Abstract

Graduate nursing students should have a strong ethical theoretical foundation to identify and explore scientific and technological ethical issues impacting nursing care, to assume leadership positions in practice and education, and to conduct research contributing to nursing’s knowledge base. This paper reports the implementation and evaluation of a new ethics course at Turkish doctoral nursing programs. The first section describes course design and implementation. The second section evaluates the course and discusses results. Students’ evaluations indicated that the concept of caring in key ethical theories, particularly care ethics, was vital to course content. The most preferred teaching method was case analysis. Students suggested increase in course length and credits, content inclusion of feminist ethics, and real-world knowledge application by other teaching strategies such as clinical practice visits and hospital ethics committee member participation.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the students who contributed to this methodological study with their evaluations and to Assistant Professor Fatoş Korkmaz who manually analysed the data collection forms. I also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the coordinators and teaching staff of Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics program, which helped me in completing this task.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Nursing, Hacettepe University, 06100, Ankara, Turkey

    Leyla Dinç

  2. Hemşirelik Fakültesi, Hemşirelik Esasları Anabilim Dalı, Hacettepe Üniversitesi, 06100, Ankara, Türkiye

    Leyla Dinç

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  1. Leyla Dinç
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Correspondence to Leyla Dinç.

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Dinç, L. Implementation and Evaluation of a Nursing Ethics Course at Turkish Doctoral Nursing Programs. J Acad Ethics 13, 375–387 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-015-9243-5

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