Which are the moral competencies of nursing profession internationally? Is the knowledge offered in the bachelor degree sufficient to support nurses in facing the ethical and moral challenges they are exposed to in their daily practice? How can the continuous development of competences be promoted?

The challenge of developing the moral and ethical skills of the nurses, made even more evident by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been translated into a concrete project led by Prof. Alvisa Palese (University of Udine– Department of Medicine), together with her collaborators Dr. Jessica Longhini and Dr. Stefania Chiappinotto, with 5 other countries: University of Patras (Greece, Ass. Prof. Michael Igoumenidis), University of Leuven (Belgium, Prof. Chris Gastmans), University of Turku (Finland, Prof. Riitta Suhonen), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland, Prof. Catherine McCabe) and Cyprus Nurses and Midwives Association (CYNMA-Cyprus, Prof. Evridiki Papastavrou).

PROMOCON Project (Promoting a morally competent nurse) is an Erasmus+ funded project that has started in 2022 and will last three years. The aim is to promote a deeper understanding of the importance of moral values and ethical principles in nursing and to increase moral and ethical competences among nurses and nursing students. There is a strong need to support nurses more, by providing them with advanced training that supports them in ethical decision-making. The project will develop: a needs analysis on all populations of interest in the countries involved; two literature reviews in order to identify effective interventions to promote moral competencies and tools to assess them; the profile of the “morally competent” nurse and a related curriculum through a MOOC; a “Train the Trainers” toolkit and an in-person Summer School; finally, a Good Practice Guide for nurses, students, trainers and stakeholders.