Uncertainties in the teaching of ethics to students of nursing

Whilst ethics is now commonplace on nursing curricula in the United Kingdom there remains doubt as to how and what to teach. This doubt has its origins in interlinked uncertainties within nursing, ethics and education. In nursing there are uncertainties about whether we are teaching ethics to professionalize or because we are a profession, and about whether there is something which is uniquely 'nursing ethics'. In ethics there are competing paradigms of ethical theory and competing theories of moral development. In education there are competing epistemologies, theories of learning and models of curriculum planning. These uncertainties are interlinked and an understanding of them will help clarify the debate as to what to teach and how to teach it.