The teaching of bioethics and the thematic choices of students

Abstract

The teaching of Bioethics in the curricular unit of Ethics II of a nursing degree course in Setúbal, Portugal, from 2008/2009 to 2016/2017, was based on the premise of the students’ free choice to study and deepen their knowledge of the topic. In this article, we contextualized this pedagogical practice, identifying and analyzing the students’ choices, problematizing changes over the course of nine academic years in a short relationship with debates in civil society and changes in bylaw. The most commonly chosen themes were beginnings of life (voluntary pregnancy, surrogate gestation), end-of-life (euthanasia, dysthanasia) and biotechnologies (donation and organ transplantation). The conclusions suggest the themes were chosen due to the relationship between bioethics and professional training, but also a bioethical education for citizenship.