Abstract

This article is a reflection on the use of case study material in the teaching of ethics to nursing students. Given the main aims of a course in ethics for nurses and the limited effectiveness of formal moral theory, it seems inevitable that the mainstay of nursing ethics courses will continue to be case study material. This approach has recently been criticized on a number of grounds. The author suggests here that disquiet over teaching ethics in this way should motivate a concern not with whether, but how, teaching by cases is to be undertaken