Effects of Bioethics Education Program on College Nursing Students.

Abstract

This study was conducted on college nursing students to investigate the effect on biomedical ethics consciousness, interpersonal relationship empathy, social empathy, critical thinking tendency, and moral behavior after completion of the bioethics education program. The data was collected on March 15 to July 15, 2020 from 46 college nursing students of K University who wished to receive biomedical ethics education and have consented to participate in the study. The 16-weeks bioethics education program was provided, and the effect was measured the before, during, and after training. The 183 questions of questionnaire consist of biomedical ethics consciousness, interpersonal relationship empathy, social empathy, critical thinking tendency, and moral behavior question. The collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS WIN/25.0. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to verify the normality of the dependent variable and the hypothesis test to verify the effectiveness of the program was analyzed using number, percentage, mean, standard deviation, RM ANOVA, and Friedman test, paired t-test, and Wilcoxon sign rank. After providing the bioethics education programs, there were no statistically significant changes in the sense of life care ethics and moral behavior over time, but there were statistically significant changes in interpersonal empathy, social empathy, and critical thinking according to time. Based on the results of this study, bioethics education is a program that helps strengthen interpersonal empathy, social empathy, and critical thinking, and it is necessary to provide repeated education to bring about changes in bioethics and moral behavior. Thus, it is expected that the data can provide basic information for the advancement of the program in bioethics education for college students.