Beyond the skills: Using simulation to teach ethics
Date
2014-01-10
Authors
Norrena, Leanne
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Abstract
The realities of emergency nursing practice are that nurses work in complex environments. Educators need to start looking past just preparing nurses for the psychomotor competencies required, to also examining how nurses can provide safe, competent, compassionate and ethical care. Enhancing ED nurses’ abilities to be sensitive to and reflective about the complexity of their ethical environment will better prepare them to consider how they might choose to act in response to those forces. The inability of practicing nurses, or the educators facilitating their learning, to see the ethical issues in their daily practice is the primary concern I addressed with my project. I am interested in making ethics something ED nurses learn to discuss, something that is explicitly addressed rather than being hidden in coffee room discussions and classrooms. Using the pedagogical approach of transformative learning theory, in combination with simulation as a teaching strategy, I worked within an existing course framework to facilitate making ethics an explicit part of learning about nursing practice in the ED.
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Keywords
Ethics, Simulation, Transformative Learning