Navigating the Grey: Ethics in Nursing

By Karine Guay, Champlain Regional College

At a Glance

Discipline

Health science

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Course

Introduction to Nursing

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Group

Type of Tasks

Creating & designing
Discussing
Analyzing

Technical Details

Class size

Small (20-49)

Time

Brief segment of class period (< 20 mins)

Inclusivity & Accessibility

Variety of action & expression

Instructional Purpose

Preparation & knowledge activation

Overview

The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to terminology about values and ethics in the Nursing profession.

Students will benefit from this activity because it will help them “play” with terminology used in ethics and activate their brain for the concepts discussed in the class.

In this activity, students classify words related to ethics in 5 categories (that they have to create). The strategies used are Concept Mapping, Peer Instruction Think-Pair-Share.

This activity occurs in the classroom and lasts 20 minutes (15 minutes for the activity and 5 minutes to review).

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

Differentiate concepts related to ethics in nursing
Apply a method of ethical analysis to a clinical situation
Use reference documents (OIIQ Code of Ethics, Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms) to guide discussions

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Document

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

Helps students get into action at the beginning of the class
Familiarizes them with words they will hear during class
Makes students discuss the words/terminology and what they think it means

Challenges

Students that did not complete the preparatory work (ticket to class) will have no idea of the terms written on the cards and this might impact group work. If feasible, these students should step out of class and complete the preparatory work, however, they will miss most of the activity.
Since it is group work, some students don’t stay on task and start chit chatting. If the teacher circulates among the groups asking them to share their thoughts/justify the categories created, it helps them to stay focused.

Tips

Guide the groups that have difficulty coming up with categories.
Refer the students to the preview readings.
Discuss with each group and share one of the original categories with them, asking them which cards they would put in this category and if this would change their card sorting.

Applied Strategies

Peer Instruction & Think-pair-share

Communication, conceptual reasoning and reflection

Published: 03/09/2024

Copyright: © 2025 Guay. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication on this website is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.