Ethical Reasoning Debriefing in Disaster Simulations

Abstract

Background: With disasters occurring often, nurses must understand and ethically implement disaster management and patient care coordination. Yet these topics are often not discussed in nursing education curricula. Simulations are a potential solution to this ethical educational deficit, allowing students to act as professional nurses in a realistic scenario with minimal threat of harm to themselves or others.

Aim: This study investigates the effect of a high fidelity, multiple-casualty disaster simulation followed by a structured faculty-led debriefing session on perceived ethical reasoning confidence on senior Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students. Additionally, the effect of the intervention on students' perceived importance of ethical reasoning and perceptions of such skills was explored.

Methods: Students were provided with preparatory materials on the START (Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment) System and The Madison Collaborative's Ethical Reasoning in Action Eight Key Questions (8KQ) frameworks one week before the simulation exercise. In total, 90 students worked in pairs during the 15-minute disaster simulation. Participants' ethical reasoning attitudes were measured before and after the exercise, employing the Survey of Ethical Reasoning (SER) to indicate the importance of each of the 8KQ in students' ethical reasoning process using a five-point Likert scale. The SER was administered electronically using Qualtrics and statistical analysis was completed using SPSS. The 8KQ was also used in the debriefing led by faculty.

Results: Comparative assessment of pre and post-results demonstrate significant growth in students' ethical reasoning confidence scores (t(89) = -6.609, p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Simulations are shown to be effective educational approaches in developing ethical reasoning confidence and promoting the development of students' ethical preparedness.

Keywords: Disaster planning; Ethics; Nursing education; Nursing students; Patient simulation.