Nursing students and teaching of codes of ethics: an empirical research study

To explore graduating nursing students' perception of nurse educators' teaching of codes of ethics in polytechnics providing basic nursing education in Finland, this study had 214 nursing students to respond to a structured questionnaire with one open-ended question. Students perceived teaching of the codes as fairly extensive. The emphasis was on the nurse–patient relationship. Less attention was paid to nursing in wider social contexts. Students whose teaching had been integrated into clinical training perceived that teaching had been more extensive. However, students did not perceive integration to clinical training as a much used teaching format. Students assessed their own knowledge and ability to apply the codes as mediocre. Those educators, whose knowledge about the codes students had assessed as adequate, were also perceived to teach the codes more extensively. While this data must be viewed with caution, the authors conclude that when teaching ethics, particular attention should be paid to more versatile use of teaching and evaluation methods, organization of integrated teaching, educators' competence in ethics, and student outcomes so that the importance of ethics would come across to all nursing students.