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Douglas College

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DC Vision Centre 3

DLC: Opening Ceremonies 4

DLC: Open House 6

Phys Ed gets ball rolling 9 BC Benefits: New name, same goal 10

THE DOUGLAS COLLEGE NEWSLETTER & NOVEMBER 1996

Nursing ethics education meets interdisciplinary

challenge

When we think of bioethics, most of us think of the huge issues: abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technology.

When it comes to bioethics in nursing, hese questions loom even larger. To help students grapple with issues such as these, most nursing programs already offer courses in advanced bioethics.

But what about the more frequent ethical decisions demanded by nurses’ day-to-day lives—on the ward, dealing with other health professionals, or with the families of their patients? That’s where a new interdisciplinary course offered by Douglas College’s Philosophy and General Nursing comes in.

“Ethics is the basis of our profession,” says General Nursing Instructor Esther Aneke. “We need an introductory course to look at the daily ethical problems students will encounter in the real world.”

Fellow Instructor Denise Hawthorne agrees. “Beginning nurses need a grounding in the basics, from a philosophical standpoint. But offering the course as part of the General Nursing Program ensures that it will reflect our patient-centred, caring perspective.”

It’s the balance between theory and practice that makes the Douglas College course unique, Hawthorne says. She and Aneke have just returned from the

General Nursing’s Esther Aneke and Denise Hawthorne.

Canadian Bioethics Society Conference in Montreal, where they co-presented the paper Nursing Ethics Education: An Interdisciplinary Challenge, which was applauded for its innovative approach.

“There has been fragmentation in interdisciplinary communication, certainly in contemporary bioethics discourse,” she notes. “An interdisciplinary approach is very difficult in practice—for theorists, educators, and health professionals—but we need to do it. This course is a step in that direction—we’re acting as role models for applied ethics in nursing.”

“The transition to what we call a ‘seamless approach’ in health care continues to be a struggle,” Aneke adds. In fact, last spring’s nursing grads listed communication with other disciplines and the issue of reporting (‘whistle-blowing’ ) as top everyday concerns. In a time of rapid change, cost constraints, and a growing multicultural patient base, Aneke emphasizes that “we all need to learn how to listen to each other.”

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