Free Ethics Continuing Education Units (CEU) for Nurses

Overview of Ethics CEU Courses

Generally, ethics deals with the morals and values within the practices of a certain field or activity. Within the field of nursing, there is a code of ethics that must be adhered to by everyone who is practicing, regarding the treatment of patients. The code of ethics is divided into six principles which can be summarized as 1) being compassionate and positive, 2) maintaining integrity, 3) honoring patients' requests, 4) being equitable with all patients, 5) non-harming, and 6) acting solely on the basis of providing care to patients. There are plenty of organizations and websites that provide free CEU courses that cover various aspects of the code of ethics for different specialties and circumstances.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses

The AACN provides a wide library of free courses within the field of ethics that offer CE credits. Most of the courses offer one contact hour or Continuing Education Recognition Point (CERP), though some also award as many as 2.5 contact hours covering topics such as practicing ethically in intensive care and dealing with ethical dilemmas. Some courses are available in video formats; however, most are available as articles. Though the courses are free, a free membership is required in order to access the materials on the AACN website. Some course titles included are:

• Honing in on Incivility
• Co-Advocate: Prevent Ethical Conflict and Moral Distress in the Intensive Care Unit
• Heart Failure: Types, Stages, and Management

Nurse.com

Nurse.com currently offers two ethics courses that are completely free to take and receive CE contact hours. The courses are titled, 'Family Caregivers: Doing Double Duty,' and 'Pain Management and Ethics: What's the Right Thing To Do?' These courses both award one contact hour upon completion, and require an account to be made with the Nurse website. In addition, these courses are free only for those who agree to share certain demographic and survey information with the sponsored company that provides the free course to Nurse.com. The pain management course is formatted as a webinar, while the caregiving course is formatted with written information to be studied. Some learning objectives of these courses include:

• Learning how the principles of ethics apply to pain management
• Managing each patient's pain through an individualistic, ethical lens
• Learning common problems and patterns in family caregiving
• Using the practices of family caregiving with principles of nursing and other disciplines

Medscape

Medscape's CME and Education website acts as a resource pool for CE credits in many specialties for healthcare practitioners. Courses specifically concentrated in ethics are available, such as 'Informed Consent: Whose Responsibility?', for .25 CME/CE. Courses are formatted as articles and cover various nursing fields such as internal medicine, family medicine, and neurology. Although they are all no cost, a free Medscape registration is required in order to both access them and to keep track of the hours accrued while on the site.