Ethical global health in nursing education: An integrative review

Aim: The purpose of this integrative review is to provide a comprehensive review of ethical considerations for host communities and nursing programs in planning, implementing and evaluating global health experiences for nursing students. Background: Global health experiences for nursing students are proliferating rapidly across university settings while at the same time decreasing the average time spent in the host country engaged with local communities. Global health experiences are an area where students can experience ethics as it is applied across varied contexts including resource limited international settings. As nursing education expands its global programming, exploring the ethical implications of designing, implementing and evaluating GHEs becomes pivotal to build respectful, sustainable relationships with global partners and best prepare nursing students for ethical professional practice in an interconnected world. Design: We conducted an integrative review to examine ethical considerations in development of ethical global health experiences that benefit, rather than harm, host communities and participating nursing student guests. Methods: The search included articles published in English language, peer-reviewed journals between 1998 and 2021 that discussed ethics in the context of nursing students traveling internationally for global health experiences. Eighteen articles met criteria for review. Results: Overall, findings demonstrate relatively little research specific to ethical engagement in global health experiences. The articles in this integrative review discussed a range of ethical attributes including reciprocity or collaboration, respect, sustainability or commitment, justice and openness. Recommendations based on research and non-research articles are provided. Conclusions: Ethical comportment in global health experiences requires careful planning, implementation and evaluation to assure an equitable and sustainable partnership between host community, faculty and nursing student guests.