To the Editor

As a branch of practical philosophy, ethics focuses on appropriate actions and attitudes toward life, defining what is good and bad or right and wrong in certain situations. Bioethics is a branch of ethics investigating ethical issues in health care, such as life and death. It encompasses many people, including doctors, nurses, patients, and their families. Nursing ethics is another branch of bioethics that examines nurses' ethical difficulties. It is crucial for nursing professionals whose primary goal is to provide human care [1, 2]. One of the most essential parts of providing ethical care is having adequate moral reasoning. Every day, nurses face a variety of ethical dilemmas; the ability to reason ethically might be crucial in these instances [3]. Ethical reasoning, defined as a person's ability to assess and make judgments based on his/her knowledge and conscience to provide the most appropriate answer and rationale in ethical quandaries and difficult clinical conditions, is critical to providing the best patient care. As a result, a lack of ethical reasoning leads to erroneous decision-making and incorrect behavior, which can harm the patients, their family, and the nurses and lead to poor quality treatment and occupational dissatisfaction in nursing [4, 5].

End-of-life care, which is part of palliative care and aims to improve the quality of life of dying patients, is an ethically complex challenge for nurses. Because there is still no consensus on all of the moral questions surrounding staying with or discontinuing treatment at different phases of these patients' care, nurses and doctors must decide decisions about them while taking a variety of factors into account, including the needs of the patient as well as those of their relatives, their legal rights, the norms of society, and the ethical responsibilities they have toward these patients [6, 7]. Given the importance of nurses providing end-of-life care and its high sensitivity, they must increase their knowledge and moral reasoning skills to deal with these situations [8].

Education is an important and influential factor in nurses' ethical reasoning. Training in ethical reasoning will help nurses manage current ethical dilemmas and choose the optimal moral response under challenging situations. Despite the importance of ethical reasoning, research has shown that nurses generally lack the knowledge required to make moral judgments. This can harm a nurse's happiness with their performance, make them feel inadequate, and make them oblivious to ethical issues. It can also harm the quality and safety of treatment delivered to patients and their loved ones' satisfaction [9].

In sum, previous evidence related to the effect of educational workshops related to ethical reasoning skills on the improvement of end-of-life care by nurses are very limited. Therefore, it is suggested that researchers conduct more studies in this field. Also, nursing managers and policymakers can formulate appropriate educational workshops related to ethical reasoning skills for nurses to better deal with ethical decision-making challenges in the provision of end-of-life care by nurses.

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Authors’ contributions

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work: AMN, AZK, SE; Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content: AMN, AZK, SE; Final approval of the version to be published: AMN, AZK, SE; Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved: AMN, AZK, SE.

Funding

Self-funded.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Competing interests

We do not have potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Using artificial intelligent chatbots

None.