Survey of bioethics teaching in Nursing Courses of Brazilian Federal Universities

Abstract

This documentary research paper aims to identify the presence of bioethics, or Bioethics related themes, as subject matter in undergraduate nursing courses of Brazilian Federal Universities. As basic inclusion criteria for the sample selection, only the universities which provided the Pedagogical Political Projects of the Nursing Courses online were included. We identified in the collected results from 16 institutions (27%), which met the criteria, that eight Universities have Bioethics as curriculum component or specific theme (50% of the total number) of, and that there is no teaching of Bioethics or related themes, in the other eight universities. Seven of these Universities (43.75%) address the following issues: ethics, nursing law, nursing practice and deontology. And one university (6.25%) does not address the issue. It is concluded that the subject matter bioethics and/or related themes are not present in all curricula of the Nursing courses in Brazilian Federal Universities identified in this study. The lack of curricular standardization in relation to the offer of the subject leads to the conclusion that the professional training in nursing is impaired and that it also established discrepancy among courses offered by different institutions.