Moral reasoning in college students: implications for nursing education.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moral reasoning levels of undergraduate students, freshman through senior (N = 266), in a liberal arts college. Three groups of students, two liberal arts, and one nursing participated in the study. All three groups had enrolled in one of two general education curricular tracks. Two of the groups, one liberal arts and one nursing, were enrolled in a traditional general education curriculum; the third group enrolled in an integrated general education curriculum which used decision-making as an organizational structure. Moral reasoning levels were determined for the three groups via Rest's Defining Issues Test. Results revealed the liberal arts students in the integrated curriculum had significantly higher moral reasoning levels than those in the traditional curriculum. The nursing students were intermediate in moral reasoning levels to the two liberal arts groups. These results suggest that baccalaureate nursing educators should consider an approach similar to the integrated curriculum with a decision-making organizational structure to facilitate students' moral reasoning development. Regardless of their area of clinical practice, today's professional nurses are increasingly confronted with ethical dilemmas and often required to make moral/ethical decisions. Nurses who reason at a high moral or ethical level are assumed to practice by a code of moral principles and thus more likely to make decisions which value others and respect their rights and dignity (Felton & Parsons, 1987). In response to this relatively complex dimension in nursing practice, nursing educators have begun to discuss how best to prepare the nursing student to make these high-level ethical decisions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)