Ethical Grand Rounds: Teaching Ethics at the Point of Care.

We offer an educational innovation called Ethical Grand Rounds (EGR) as a teaching strategy to enhance ethical decision-making. Nursing students participate in EGR-flexible ethical laboratories, where they take stands on ethical dilemmas, arguing for--or against--an ethical principle. This process provides the opportunity to move past normative ethics, that is, an ideal ethical stance in accord with ethical conduct codes, to applied ethics, what professional nurses would do in actual clinical practice, given the constraints that exist in contemporary care settings. EGR serves as a vehicle to translate "what ought to be" into "what is."