Ethics Knowledge Acquisition and Ethics-Related Constructs Across Nursing Education and Professional Development: An Integrated Scoping Review

This project is a Joanna Briggs Institute–guided scoping review examining how ethics-related knowledge and ethical literacy are conceptualized, taught, and assessed in nursing education and professional practice. Although ethics learning is widely recognized as foundational to nursing, the literature uses inconsistent and overlapping terminology to describe ethics-related constructs such as ethical competence, moral reasoning, ethical decision-making, professionalism, and professional values. This lack of conceptual clarity makes it difficult to compare findings across studies and evaluate ethics learning outcomes. To address this issue, the review maps ethics-related constructs used in nursing research and examines how ethics knowledge is developed within both nursing education and professional practice. Studies will be included if they address ethics teaching, learning, development, or application where ethics-related knowledge or learning processes are described, implied, or measured. Findings will identify educational approaches, assessment strategies, and gaps that can inform future research and curriculum development in nursing ethics education.