Abstract:

Knowledge, skills and attitudes are the three basic components of education. This research focuses on attitudes, and its related curriculum design in the context of nursing training program. Life education, a term commonly used in the Chinese speaking societies (China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), aims at enhancing learners’ mindfulness and nurturing learners' character in order that they are able to explore, respect and appreciate life. Life education is a kind of value education, but it takes students’ Sitz in Lebem seriously. The significance of life education are that first, it does not fall into moralism; second, it takes lived experience seriously; third, it is not confined to a course.

Nursing is a helping profession, and two of the four areas of competence are related to the concern of attitudes, namely, personal and professional attributes; professional, legal and ethical nursing practice. According to the requirements for the enrolled nurse, these two areas of competence are recommended to takes minimum 105 contact hours out of minimum 780 contact hours. Its relatively less proportion of overall contact hours does not necessarily mean that education for attitudes is less important in nursing education, but rather education for attitudes is integrated into other areas of competence, and is continuously carried out beyond the contact hours. Then the concern is how to use the contact hours for personal and professional attributes, and professional, legal and ethical nursing practice to lay the ground for students’ personal growth.

Since 2014, I have introduced a course of life education to a 2-years enrolled nurse training program of the Union Hospital, Hong Kong. This research is about the curriculum design based on the experience of 3 classes in different years attending the course. The research questions are what kind of attitudes are important, why they are important, how they are taught, how students are assessed, what the impacts of these attitudes are in their profession, and how students develop a critical mindfulness for their personal and professional attributes.

Keywords:

Life education, nursing education, character formation, value education.