Ethics Module Research Articles

Learning professional ethics: Student experiences in a health mentor program.

The use of patient centred approaches to healthcare education is evolving, yet the effectiveness of these approaches in relation to professional ethics education is not well understood. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and learning of health profession students engaged in an ethics module as part of a Health Mentor Program at the University of Toronto. Students were assigned to interprofessional groups representing seven professional programs and matched with a health mentor. The health mentors, individuals living with chronic health conditions, shared their experiences of the healthcare system through 90 minute semi-structured interviews with the students. Following the interviews, students completed self-reflective papers and engaged in facilitated asynchronous online discussions. Thematic analysis of reflections and discussions was used to uncover pertaining to student experiences and learning regarding professional ethics. Five major themes emerged from the data: (1) Patient autonomy and expertise in care; (2) ethical complexity and its inevitable reality in the clinical practice setting; (3) patient advocacy as an essential component of day-to-day practice; (4) qualities of remarkable clinicians that informed personal ideals for future practice; (5) patients' perspectives on clinician error and how they enabled suggestions for improving future practice. The findings of a study in one university context suggest that engagement with the health mentor narratives facilitated students' critical reflection related to their understanding of the principles of healthcare ethics.

Needs Assessment for Teaching/Learning Nursing Ethics for Master of Nursing Students

This study aims to carry out the needs assessment for teaching/learning nursing ethics for Master of Nursing (MN) students, to review existing curriculum and to develop a nursing ethics education module for teaching nursing ethics to students. First-year MN students from the School of Nursing, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, Nepal were invited to participate in the study. Data was collected with self-reported, pre-tested questionnaires and analysed for the descriptive statistics. The current MN curriculum of Tribhuvan University, Institute of Medicine, Nepal was reviewed and a nursing ethics module developed based on needs assessment and in consultation with students. Out of 16 students, 12 (75%) participated in the study. All were aware of the content of nursing ethics in their curriculum and recommended updating the content, with a focus on context-based practical issues. More than two-thirds suggested small-group, case-based presentations/discussions as a suitable teaching/learning method. The majority (83.3%) mentioned case analyses as an appropriate tool for assessment. No separate course for nursing ethics is included in the curriculum. Unit 4—“Ethical and bioethical issues in health and nursing”—is one of the seven units of the course “trends and issues in nursing”. Subsequently, gaps in the existing curriculum related to nursing ethics were identified, and the nursing ethics education module was developed. Teaching/learning of nursing ethics has been initiated. Such steps may enrich the capacity of nurses in resolving ethical dilemmas, the quality of care and the virtue of the profession.

Teaching marketing ethics: a preliminary study

This paper presents the results of a preliminary study which serves as a precursor to a more intensive study into developing ethics modules for undergraduate marketing courses. This initial effort is designed to advance the movement toward effectuating the inclusion of ethics in marketing courses. The authors use as a starting point the Hunt-Vitell general theory of marketing ethics. This paper then reviews the research on specific marketing ethics subjects and uses that data in semi-structured interviews conducted with experienced marketing professors from the USA, Canada and China. Some of the specific topics reviewed with the interviewees included ethical aspects of general marketing, advertising, sales force management and consumer relations. The results of this preliminary study provide practical groundwork for a larger study and further research into incorporating ethics into various marketing courses. This may provide a more complete marketing education experience for undergraduate marketing majors.

Notes on Business Ethics

This paper formed the basis for five seminars taught as part of the International Business Ethics module, MSc Programme, Birkbeck, University of London, in 2010 and 2011. The overall aim of the seminars was to develop a series of arguments that can provide a route into an ethical analysis of the activities of business. Each of the arguments continues to be under development, and these notes can be read and critiqued in this light. There are of course other ways to address business ethics. The seminars considered how an ethical analysis of business activity might work. The paper has five parts: • Part 1: Responsibilities of firms • Part 2: Global responsibilities of firms • Part 3: Employment and authority • Part 4: Business disciplines and rationality • Part 5: Firms and the environment

Developing public health ethics learning modules – can we learn from critical pedagogy?

Curriculum development in masters of public health programs that effectively meets the complex ethical challenges of the 21st century is an important part of public health education and requires ethical reasoning and purposively thinking. Current master programs in Public Health do not regularly include modules in public health ethics. The aim of this paper is to present background and theoretical foundation for developing a methodology and methods to develop public health ethics modules for curriculum development in public health programs. We describe ethical reasoning in medicine and in Public Health, specify pedagogical approaches and key assignments organized around the critical pedagogy.

It's All in the Game: A 3D Learning Model for Business Ethics

How can we improve business ethics education for the twenty first century? This study evaluates the effectiveness of a visual case exercise in the form of a 3D immersive game given to undergraduate students at two UK Universities as part of a mandatory business ethics module. We propose that due to evolving learning styles, the immersive nature of interactive games lends itself as a vehicle to make the learning of ethics more ‘concrete’ and ‘personal’ and therefore more engaging. To achieve this, we designed and built an immersive 3D simulation game in the style of a visual case. The effectiveness of the game was evaluated using a mixed methods approach measuring recognised and adapted constructs from the technology acceptance model. Results demonstrate that students found the game beneficial to their learning of ethics with the development of knowledge and skills applicable to the real world and that they engaged with the process due to game elements. Findings demonstrate the potential for the development of simulated games to teach ethics at all levels and modes of delivery and the contribution of this type of visual case model as a pedagogic method.

The Virtue of “Virtue Ethics” in Business and Business Education

This article offers an approach to advance the use of virtue ethics in the training of business managers and leaders, as well as in the education of business students. A thesis is that virtue ethics offers a valuable way to think about how we want to be and what we should strive to become qua businessperson, manager, and leader. The article provides a framework for thinking about virtue ethics in the context of business and leadership, with emphasis on building trust in organizations. It includes a brief summary of Aristotelian virtue ethics, core concepts, and how they apply to management and leadership decision-making. The article concludes with a summary of an approach for teaching a virtue ethics module, which has evolved over the past 20 years. Included are exercises, a survey tool, and a business case as components of the module. The module has been used in corporate training, as well as graduate and undergraduate business education. It is hoped this approach will spur others to explore other ways to bring virtue ethics to business and business education.

Students’ Perceptions Regarding the Third Year Nursing Ethics Module at Shifa College of Nursing, Islamabad, Pakistan

Students’ Perceptions Regarding the Third Year Nursing Ethics Module at Shifa College of Nursing, Islamabad, Pakistan

Undergraduate healthcare ethics education, moral resilience, and the role of ethical theories

This article combines foundational and empirical aspects of healthcare education and develops a framework for teaching ethical theories inspired by pragmatist learning theory and recent work on the concept of moral resilience. It describes an exemplary implementation and presents data from student evaluation. After a pilot implementation in a regular ethics module, the feasibility and acceptance of the novel framework by students were evaluated. In addition to the regular online module evaluation, specific questions referring to the teaching of ethical theories were added using simple (yes/no) and Likert rating answer formats. At the Bern University of Applied Sciences, a total of 93 students from 2 parallel sub-cohorts of the bachelor's program in nursing science were sent the online survey link after having been exposed to the same modular contents. A total of 62% of all students participated in the survey. The survey was voluntary and anonymous. Students were free to write their name and additional comments. Students consider ethical theories-as taught within the proposed framework-as practically applicable, useful, and transferable into practice. Teaching ethical theories within the proposed framework overcomes the shortcomings described by current research. Students do not consider the mutually exclusive character of ethical theories as an insurmountable problem. The proposed framework is likely to promote the effectiveness of healthcare ethics education. Inspired by pragmatist learning theory, it enables students to consider ethical theories as educative playgrounds that help them to "frame" and "name" the ethical issues they encounter in daily practice, which is seen as an expression of moral resilience. Since it does not advocate a single ethical theory, but is open to the diversity of traditions that shape ethical thinking, it promotes a culturally sensitive, ethically reflected healthcare practice.

An Interdisciplinary Ethics Module for MSW and Nursing Students

The teaching of ethics in social work can be incorporated in the curriculum in multiple ways. This article outlines an interdisciplinary module with nursing and social work students at a small United States Midwestern university as a means of developing awareness of multiple perspectives surrounding ethical dilemmas in healthcare. Background information related to teaching interdisciplinary ethics and use of case studies is presented. Discussion of the interdisciplinary ethics exercise includes a summary of observations relative to the exercise and challenges in its implementation are outlined.

Helping students to see for themselves that ethics matters

Business ethics education is experiencing a renaissance as recurring corporate scandals and malpractice over the last decade have ensured that most universities now see the subject as an important and necessary component of any business degree course. As well as integrating professional ethics into their curriculum, Business Schools are also developing standalone ethics courses, showing that they take seriously their responsibility to help prepare the next generation of managers to improve business' track record of transparency, accountability and sustainable development. However what are the learning approaches that will help to bring about real improvements in business ethics learning at university? This paper argues that a holistic approach to ethics teaching is needed, in which students are encouraged to develop ethical knowledge and skills within their personal value systems. In this way ethics does not become something apart but integrated into one's terms of reference. The paper discusses a particular pedagogic approach designed to develop a student's ‘critical consciousness’ using a student-led learning method in which students actively engage with important concepts and discuss the issues amongst themselves within an environment where they can speak freely. Qualitative interviews with a selection of undergraduates on the compulsory first year professional ethics module provide insight into the impact of the method on attitudes and behaviours.

Leadership in Interprofessional Community Service Learning: Ethics Module

OPEN ACCESSFebruary 21, 2013Leadership in Interprofessional Community Service Learning: Ethics Module Melanie Stone, MPH, MEd, Craig Klugman, Veronica Young Melanie Stone, MPH, MEd The University of Texas School of Medicine at San Antonio Google Scholar More articles by this author , Craig Klugman UT Health Sciences Center San Antonio Google Scholar More articles by this author , Veronica Young University of Texas-Austin Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.9348 SectionsAbout ToolsDownload Citations ShareFacebookTwitterEmail AbstractAbstractThis resource on ethics in community service learning was designed to promote social accountability among health professional students through the integration of meaningful service learning with the core competencies of interprofessional education. This resource begins with background reading, an online presentation of content, and an online discussion question, followed by reinforcement in a class session through a small-group activity and whole-group discussion. The goal of this module is to appreciate the contributions of different health professions in working together as a team and to demonstrate ethical decision-making in educational and professional interactions. This resource enables students from various health science professions to learn with, from, and about each other and each other's roles on a health care team as they examine social determinants of health and social justice issues while applying these principles in a structured service learning practicum. Educational Objectives By the end of this resource, learners will be able to: Understand different professional roles in the health field by actively participating with students from a variety of health professions (i.e., medical, pharmacy, nursing, dental, etc.).Discuss ethical issues related to community service learning.Develop ethical approaches to interprofessional patient/population-centered care situations.Critically reflect on their own personal role as a future health care provider in a team-based setting. Sign up for the latest publications from MedEdPORTAL Add your email below FILES INCLUDEDReferencesRelatedDetails FILES INCLUDED Included in this publication: CSL Ethics Instructor's Guide.doc An Ethical Framework with recording.pptx CSL Ethics Syllabus.doc CSL in Ethics Cases, Handout.docx Ethics in CSL Cases.pptx To view all publication components, extract (i.e., unzip) them from the downloaded .zip file. Download editor’s noteThis publication may contain technology or a display format that is no longer in use. Copyright & Permissions© 2013 Stone et al. This is an open-access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike license.KeywordsBioethicsHealth Equity ResearchCommunity Service LearningTeamworkInterprofessional Education Collaboration (IPEC) Disclosures None to report. Funding/Support None to report. Loading ...

Affective learning and the classroom debate

A commonly used teaching method to promote student engagement is the classroom debate. This study evaluates how affective characteristics, as defined in Bloom’s taxonomy, were stimulated during debates that took place on a professional ethics module for first year computing undergraduates. The debates led to lively interactive group discussions with a high level of student engagement and participation. Data were collected from observations of affective characteristics during each debate. Results support the view that debating the ethics of familiar topics trigger affective characteristics and are beneficial in developing levels of student engagement, critical analysis, flexibility of thinking and motivation to learn. In relation to teaching professional ethics, stimulation of the affective domain plays an integral part in developing ethical sensitivity – an important component for moral development. The paper supports the inclusion of teaching strategies, which stimulate both the cognitive and the affective domains to ensure a holistic approach to teaching value-based content.

Using a Web-Based, Longitudinal Approach for Teaching Accounting Ethics Education

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of an innovative web-based ethics module that was designed to integrate ethics education across four accounting courses over two years (second and third year courses) in a large Australian tertiary institution. Approach: The approach taken in designing the ethics web-based module was to base the foundations of the module on Rest's (1976) ethical behavior model with the adoption of a longitudinal approach to the coverage of financial reporting ethical issues. Practical Implications: The key objectives of the module are to improve students' awareness and sensitivity to accounting ethics, and to foster student learning in an interesting and stimulating manner, leading to in-depth understanding of accounting ethics. Originality/value of paper: This paper provides a description of an original web-based approach to delivering ethics education to accounting students across four university courses. Its value lies in not only the innovative and interactive ethics education approach but also in providing feedback from students and the profession.

E-Learning, Ethics and ‘Non-traditional’ Students: Space to Think Aloud

This paper considers the piloting of an online learning component of a final-year social work degree ethics module at an inner-city English university. An Action Research approach was used to evaluate this pilot project and the paper illustrates how students were involved in developing and designing the teaching programme as part of the Action Research cycle. The paper explores theoretical aspects of e-learning pedagogy through an analysis of issues emerging during the planning and delivery of this pilot project. The cognitive and affective impact of both face-to-face and electronic learning is discussed. It is suggested that some students may experience e-learning as a safe space for thinking about ethical dilemmas. The challenges for teachers and learners are highlighted and the author argues that in order to support student learning, online teaching needs to be carefully designed and appropriately resourced.

Ethics in Neuroscience Curricula: A Survey of Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US

This paper analyses ethical training in neuroscience curricula at universities in Australia, Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. The main findings are that 52 % of all courses have ethical training available, while in 82 % of those cases, the training is mandatory. In terms of specific contents of the teaching, ethical issues about ‘animal subjects and human participation in research’, ‘scientific misconduct’, and ‘treatment of data’ were the most prominent. A special emphasis during the research was placed on the prevalence of dual-use bioethics. In total, only 3 % of all courses mention it in any of their modules. One of the major findings of the survey was the trend towards ‘mainstreaming’ ethics education particularly in the UK, which is to disperse ethics among the various modules within the education instead of relying on a single ethics module. The paper discusses the utility of this approach for science education as well as describes the overall difficulties that course coordinators face when trying to teach ethics based on the responses to the qualitative part to the survey.

Ethics as commodity in higher education of South African natural science and engineering students

The fields of the natural sciences are increasingly shying away from purely theoretical approaches to knowledge and are instead looking toward real-world applications and products to be derived from research projects. This phenomenon is seen even in the academic setting, which increasingly seems to mimic the goals of the outcome-driven engineering world. Such developments are deemed necessary in a worldwide economy that is driven more by practical economic results and less by the ideal of contributing to discipline-specific facts and knowledge. This shift in research-perspective means that science and engineering are faced with a host of ethical and social issues which extend beyond the confines of the laboratory. With these changes, the importance of an ethical grounding for graduate students becomes ever more pressing. This article will look at the influence that a purely positivist worldview may have on the ethical and value-related education of university students in the natural sciences and engineering. It will attempt to show how the teaching of ethical approaches need not be seen as an obstacle for the training of a potential scientist or engineer, but rather as an opportunity for growth in the individual as a contributing member of his or her society and immediate community. A solution to this continually growing need for ethical grounding is suggested: educators should look at the underlying worldviews and collateral or hidden curriculum (that which is not taught formally in classes, but which the students learn anyway) and the null curriculum (that which is not taught in classes) to provide their students with ethical guidance, rather than simply focusing on adding extra ethics modules to highly technical university or college courses.

Broadening Student Perspectives On Marketing Research Ethics: Development And Applications Of A Teaching Module

This paper describes an ethics module developed by the author to engage marketing research students during the fall semester, when they are bombarded by political polls. The module matches ethically questionable polling practices to similarly troubling practices in marketing research. The goals are to show that ethical principles are not topic- or context-bound and to broaden students’ perspectives on ethics, in general.

Use of Standardized Patients to Teach Medical Students about Living Organ Donation

Educators routinely use standardized patients to teach medical students a variety of clinical concepts. Standardized patients have also been used to teach students about medical ethics and deceased organ donation. Not reported before, however, is the use of standardized patients to educate medical students about the ethical issues in living organ donation. It seems important to fill this gap because in the United States, roughly 45% of organ donors are living donors, and these patients will visit physicians throughout their lifespan, not just with the occurrence of donation. This article reports an experience teaching concepts in living donation and transplant ethics to second-year osteopathic medicine students using a standardized patient and supplementary instructional materials (eg, film, panel discussion, reading list). Specifically, a transplant ethics module was created that included an actor portraying a living donor candidate who had a number of case variables pertaining to medical and psychosocial matters. Instructional themes included informed consent, altruism, patient selection criteria, organ vending, and post-donation support systems.

Teaching Ethics to Engineers: Ethical Decision Making Parallels the Engineering Design Process

In order to fulfill ABET requirements, Northern Arizona University's Civil and Environmental engineering programs incorporate professional ethics in several of its engineering courses. This paper discusses an ethics module in a 3rd year engineering design course that focuses on the design process and technical writing. Engineering students early in their student careers generally possess good black/white critical thinking skills on technical issues. Engineering design is the first time students are exposed to "grey" or multiple possible solution technical problems. To identify and solve these problems, the engineering design process is used. Ethical problems are also "grey" problems and present similar challenges to students. Students need a practical tool for solving these ethical problems. The step-wise engineering design process was used as a model to demonstrate a similar process for ethical situations. The ethical decision making process of Martin and Schinzinger was adapted for parallelism to the design process and presented to students as a step-wise technique for identification of the pertinent ethical issues, relevant moral theories, possible outcomes and a final decision. Students had greatest difficulty identifying the broader, global issues presented in an ethical situation, but by the end of the module, were better able to not only identify the broader issues, but also to more comprehensively assess specific issues, generate solutions and a desired response to the issue.