Educating ethics codes by lecture or role-play; which one improves nursing students' ethical sensitivity and ethical performance more? A quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Promoting ethical and professional principles through education is the major way to build and maintain people's trust in the nursing. However, despite remarkable efforts in this area, sensitivity to these principles and their application in clinical practice remain low. PURPOSE: This study aimed to compare the effect of educating codes of nursing ethics through methods of role-playing and lecture on the Ethical Sensitivity and Ethical Performance of nursing students. METHODS: A single-blinded quasi-experimental study conducted on 114 nursing students of Urmia University of medical sciences, which recruited using convenience sampling and assigned to two groups of intervention (role-paly and lecture) and one group of control, so that the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-semester nursing students were allocated to the control, role-play and lecture groups, respectively. Data were collected using the Nurses' Ethical Performance Questionnaire (EPQ) and the Lutzen's Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ) at three time-points of before, immediately after, and two months after the intervention. The same educational content was provided for both intervention groups, so that the role-play group received the intervention over an eight-day period and the lecture group received it in five sessions. RESULTS: The results showed there was a significant difference in the mean scores of ethical sensitivity and ethical performance between the three groups immediately (p < .001) and two months after the intervention (p < .001), so the mean scores were significantly higher in the role-play and lecture groups compared to the control group after the intervention (p < .001). In addition, after the intervention, the mean scores of ethical sensitivity and ethical performance in the role-play group were higher than the lecture group (p < .001). CONCLUSION: Educating codes of ethics by role-playing method had a greater positive effect on the promotion of the ethical sensitivity and ethical performance compared to the lecture.

NPWT: a gate of hope for patients with diabetic foot ulcers.

Non-healing diabetic foot ulcers are a common and costly complication of type 2 diabetes and can result in lower extremity amputation. This case study concerns a 51-year-old man with a 17-year history of uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. He had developed a deep ulcer to the calcaneus of his left foot, which was 12x7 cm in size and infected with multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. He was admitted to hospital for the non-healing diabetic foot ulcer and uncontrollable fever and was a candidate for amputation. He was treated with wound irrigation and debridement as well as negative-pressure wound therapy and antibiotic treatment. This strategy was effective and the wound size reduced progressively. The patient recovered well. Medical and wound care teams who deal with non-healing diabetic foot ulcers can benefit from a strategy of combination therapy.