Abstract:

Background:
Registered nurses utilize evidence-based nursing knowledge and professional nursing judgment to assess health needs. These nurses also provide various other activities such as nursing care, educating clients, and supporting individuals to manage their health holistically. They practice in collaboration with other healthcare professionals and sometimes need to make decisions using their critical thinking skills. With the rapid change in healthcare practices, treatment, and technology, nurses are engaged in ethical practices and decision-making for the patient and themselves. Thus, it is essential for nurses to be prepared with the knowledge of ethical principles in their undergraduate years. However, teaching ethics is not as easy as memorizing lines from a textbook. Teaching ethics must be made interactive and reflective. Thus, using debate as an assessment assist nursing students in various skills such as critical thinking, reflection, communication skills, interpersonal skills and collaborative skills.

Aim of the study:
The study will answer the following questions:
(1) What are the nursing students’ perceptions of using debate in learning ethics?
(2) Does debates helps in collaborative learning among students?

Method:
A retrospective study using data from module evaluation on 120 3rd-year undergraduate nursing students.

Results:
Students that responded to the survey, agreed that debate is a useful tool for assessment and debate helps to develop skills such as critical thinking, reflection, communication skills, interpersonal skills and collaborative skills.

Keywords:

Debate, nursing education, assessment.