The purpose of this study was to introduce and evaluate a nursing ethics seminar course designed for senior nursing students at a university to address the ethical challenges they faced during clinical practice. The course was offered as an elective and 22 students who had completed various clinical practicums over four semesters participated. The participants led discussions on ethical issues they encountered during their clinical practice. To evaluate the effectiveness of the course, an open-ended survey was conducted at the end of the course. The findings were categorized into three main themes: Individual Growth, Collaborative Opportunities, Suggestions for Improvement. The first category is comprised of ‘Experienced emotional acceptance and relaxation’, ‘Felt comforted and encouraged’, ‘Gained clarity’, and ‘Experienced personal growth’. The second category consists of ‘Self-reflection within a group’, ‘Diverse learning opportunities’, ‘Pleasures of discussion-based learning.’ Third category is comprised of ‘Modifying the lesson structure’ and ‘Optimizing the learning space.’

Nursing ethics, which is an ethical norm of nursing practice, is basic to the professionalism of nurses, and ethical education is important in building the professional virtues. The study aimed to identify the needs of nursing ethics education targeting a group of nursing professionals in South Korea. This study adopted descriptive survey design via online survey. The questionnaire items consisted of the experience of ethical issues and the needs related to the subject of ethics education in nursing. 53 questionnaires were finally analyzed by descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients. The results showed that 40 of the study participants had more than 5 years of total clinical experience(69.8%). 48 of them previously participated in nursing ethics education(90.6%). The most frequently experienced ethical issues were ‘conflicts between colleagues’, ‘protecting of patient rights’ and ‘informed consent’. In relation to nursing ethics education, ‘ethical decision making and moral distress’, ‘shared decision making’ and ‘end-of-life care’ showed high needs for education. Overall, the higher the level of experience on ethical issues, the more educational needs for nursing ethics education(r=.360, p<.01). In addition, satisfaction with previous nursing ethics education was statistically significant positive correlation with the needs for the overall nursing ethics education topic(p.<01). In conclusion, the high level of experience on ethical issues shows the demands for continuity of ethical education and systematic improvement to improve the working environment of clinical nurses, and to meet the needs of nursing ethics education, a venue for discussion and education using case-based method should be provided.

This study aimed to explore research trends of nursing ethics in Korea applying text network analysis and topic modelling. 306 articles published in KCI journals from 1998 to 2021 were identified and 516 author-provided keywords were collected. A co-occurrence matrix with 123 keywords, which appeared at least in two articles, were developed based on the Jaccard coefficient. Degree centrality and betweenness centrality were calculated and LDA topic modelling were performed using NetMiner software. The largest number of the articles (70, 23%) were published in Korean Journal of Medical Ethics. The most critical core-keywords, defined as the top 30 keywords in degree centrality and betweenness centrality, were ‘nursing students’ and ‘moral sensitivity’. The other core-keywords included ‘attitude,’ ‘awareness,’ ‘professionalism,’ ‘knowledge,’ and ‘critical thinking.’ related to ethical competence, ‘death,’ ‘hospice,’ ‘euthanasia,’ and ‘research ethics’ related to bioethical issues, and ‘job satisfaction,’ ‘burn out,’ ‘stress,’ ‘organizational culture,’ ‘ethical leadership,’ and ‘ethical climate’ related to organization and leadership. Five topics were identified and named as a) bioethics education for nursing students, b) knowledge and attitudes for bioethical issues, c) awareness and values of bioethics, d) ethical conflicts of RNs, and e) nursing ethics education. This study found that bioethics was the main topics in Korean nursing ethics research and suggested nursing research should focus on ethical issues RNs frequently experience in patient care. Also, research gaps were inferred in multiple topics including nurse-to-nurse relationships, theoretical perspectives of virtue ethics and care ethics, or witnessing healthcare professionals’ unethical behavior.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the perception of biomedical ethics in nurses and nurse’s aide of comprehensive nursing care service. Methods: The subjects were 287 registered nurses and 81 nurse’s aides who were working in comprehensive nursing care service. The data were collected from December 2 to 15, 2019 using a 4-point Likert scale questions. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Scheffé test and Dunnett T3 test, using the SPSS/WIN 23 program. Results: The average score of perception of biomedical ethics in nurses were 2.95±0.25 and nurse’s aides were 3.08±0.25 points. The perception of biomedical ethics by general characteristics related to age and marital status(p=.001), education(p=.007), a total career length and a career length of comprehensive nursing care service(p<.001), job satisfaction(p=.004) of the nurse biomedical ethics score was high and statistically significant. However, the higher the age of nurse’s aide, the higher the score was statistically significant(p=.007). The perception of biomedical ethics by characteristics related to biomedical ethics was statistically higher among nurses saying that the values of biomedical ethics were very firm (p =.002), those who have experience of having issues biomedical ethics (p =.001), those who believed that rules and procedures for biomedical ethics in a hospital were well organized (p =.003), those who believed that biomedical ethics problems would become more complex and increase in the future (p =.017), and those who experienced ethical dilemmas (p =.019). Conclusion: In the future, biomedical ethics education should be provided for nursing service teams.