Experiential ethics education: one successful model of ethics education for undergraduate nursing students in the United States.

Lachman, Grace and Gaylord have argued that for bioethics education for undergraduate nursing students, a preferred combination of instruction involves a clinically-based nurse with ethics training and a philosophically-based ethicist with clinical training. At the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, undergraduate nursing ethics instruction takes this form. The course director is a philosopher with extensive clinical experience in ethics. The course utilises four distinct forms of nursing clinical inputs to educate undergraduate nursing students using a unique combination of didactic and experiential learning exercises to simulate real ethics cases. This paper describes how the course was developed and refined over the past several years and suggests several ideas for improvements in nursing ethics education at an undergraduate level.