We often get the question, "What is the best controversial or debatable topic for a nursing student?" and have decided to answer the issue comprehensively.
Nursing students agree that choosing a suitable topic is the most challenging part of writing any nursing paper. It gets tricky to develop an ideal debate topic for your nursing paper.
A nursing debate paper has an introduction, body, and conclusion. It includes a thesis statement in the introduction and expounds on the main points in the body, mainly through a persuasive or argumentative approach.
When it is a requirement that you select a debatable nursing topic, you can start by considering the controversial healthcare topics that relate to nursing practice, education, and research. You can then expand your search into medical topics or other nursing-related subjects, such as biology, pharmacy, or psychology.
This blog will cover all the ideas and examples of debatable nursing issues for a nursing school paper. They are ideal for writing a reaction, issue, research, or term paper for school. We hope that by the end of this article, you can select the best nursing debate topic to step you in the right direction as you write the nursing essay or research paper.
Related Articles:
Ideal Nursing Debate Topics a Nursing Student Can Consider
Here are some quick nursing debate topics you can consider. They are mostly controversial issues in nursing that call for urgent solutions and address through policy change, systems approach, and other viable means to improve nursing practice and profession.
- Should nurses make end-of-life decisions for mentally ill old patients?
- Are needle exchange programs effective?
- Is nursing a science?
- Professional integrity in nursing
- Is using embryo models from stem cells ethical?
- Are needle exchange programs ethical?
- Stigmatization of AIDS patients by healthcare workers
- Do nurses get tired?
- Are fat nurses unhealthy?
- Should nurses be given health breaks?
- Should wearing uniforms be mandatory for nurses?
- Should nurses have smoking areas?
- Should nurses force children to be vaccinated?
- Is it practical to do cardiac surgery for the elderly?
- Should nurses decide when to remove feeding tubes?
- Is the Glasgow Pain Scale effective in assessing the pain levels of patients?
- Is DNA banking ethical?
- Nurses who breach privacy and confidentiality should be fired
- Cloning is unethical
- Circumcision of newborns without anesthetics
- Do Magnet Recognition Programs result in less autonomy for nurses and patient dissatisfaction?
- Magnet status is merely a marketing gimmick
- Who decides the best staffing ratio?
- The use of computers and medical errors
- Nurse burnout, yet many nurses are unemployed
- Poor pay for nurses
- Long working hours for nurses
- How long should a nurse take between patients?
- Autonomy of practice for RN
- Organ transplant between patients with AIDS
- Blood transfusion between patients with AIDS
- Ethics of weight loss surgery for teens
- Right of refusal for blood transfusion
- Rising rates of C-section births
- Should elective C-Sections for first-time mothers be more available?
- Should nurses have unions?
- Should nurses have the right to refuse to participate in a morally objectionable procedure (transfusion, stem cell research, circumcision, vasectomy, etc.)
- Mandatory overtime for nurses
- The appropriate length of shifts
- Hiring from nursing schools and universities
- Caring for a pregnant drug addict
- When should oncology patients be told they've had enough treatment with no hope for recovery?
- Recruiting and retaining specialist nurses
- Abuse and harassment of travel nurses by crews
- Nurses living with HIV/AIDS
- Mandatory drug tests for nursing practitioners and medical professionals
- Home care vs. Nursing Homes
- Making hand hygiene mandatory among nurses
- Homeless nurses
- Use of opioids in pain management
- Acupuncture for pain management
- Spinal manipulation for pain management
- Engagement of nurses in environmental conservation
- Green nursing
- Caring for homeless patients
- Caring for patients who have lost hope
- Aging in place vs. Elderly homes
- Telehealth and medical errors
- Polypharmacy and elderly care
- Use of electronic cigarettes to encourage quitting to smoke
- Working together as a nursing couple
- Should psychiatric patients be physically restrained?
- Should nurses go against their oaths?
- Long hospital shifts
- Discrimination in nursing school acceptance
- Rude nurses in practice
- Nurses being exposed to hazards in the workplace
- Poor pay for new nurses
- Nurses turnover rates
- Role of nurses in the opioid epidemic
- Rights to prescribe drugs by nurses
- Wearing tabards during medical rounds
- Staffing ratio for the nursing workforce
- Education to practice pipeline for nurses
- Is the ADN pathway effective for nursing practitioners?
- Relevance of professional nursing organizations
- Forensic Nursing
- Patient transfer under duress
- Alarm fatigue among ICU nurses
- Antipsychotics prescriptions for psychiatric patients
- Prescribing amphetamines to children
- Multidisciplinary teams caring for patients
- Nurses as patient advocates
- Succession planning in nursing
- What next for nursing retirees?
- Diversity in nursing
- Role of nurses in patient safety
- Burnout among nurses working with prisoners
- Harassment and sexual assault of prison nurses
- Minority nursing students
- Nursing educational research
- Resilience in nursing students
- Nurses practicing Yoga
- Academic burnout among nursing students
- Professional values of nursing students
- The sexual relationship between old nurses and nursing interns
- Can nurse managers marry nursing staff from their institution?
- Quality of sleep among nurses
- Eating habits among nurses
- Healthy diets for nurses at work
- Resting zones for nurses who work longer shifts
- Organized transport for nurses after longer shifts
- The work environment for nurses
- Incivility against nurses
- Workplace violence against nurses
- The span of control for nurse managers
- Retaining bedside nurses
- Moral distress in the workplace
- Professional joy and resilience
- The moral obligation of nurses
- Toxic nurse leadership
- Clinician cognitive overload for nursing leaders
- Multispecialty nursing
- Shared governance
- Interoperability of electronic health records
- Quality of life of nurses
- Artificial intelligence in nursing transition
- Nurses' wellbeing
- Policy influence of nurses
- Handling patients that refuse to eat
- Can nurses substitute social workers?
- Are psychiatric nurses a substitute for psychologists?
- Reasons for rising cases of postpartum depression
- Role of artificial intelligence in nursing care
- Self-medication among nurses
- Alcohol and substance abuse addiction among nurses
- Disciplinary action for rogue nurses
- Should nurses start nursing care centers?
- Should the state pay medical insurance for all nurses?
- Caring for the families of nurses
- Paternal and maternal leaves for nurses
- Nurses should go for long breaks
- Role of nurses in raising a healthy society
- Role of nurses during wars
- How forensic nurses handle victims of child abuse
- Investigating and reporting child molestation
- Time management when working under pressure
- Nurses often have anxiety
- Handling depression as a nurse
- Stress management training should be mandatory for nurses
- Recommending complementary alternative medicine to patients not responding to treatment
- Role of nurses in redesigning homes for the elderly
- Use of opioids in managing rheumatoid arthritis
- Handling patients who can't see or talk
- Cultural competence for nurses
- Handling LGBTQ patients and their relatives
- Discrimination of patients
- Handling patients with burn wounds
- Free housing for nursing staff
- Housing programs for nurses
- The brain drain of the nursing workforce
- Licensed Nursing
- Negligence and caring for frail and old patients
- Defamation among nurses
- Informed consent and patient care
- Shared patient decision-making; what's the boundary?
- Inadequate resources for nurses and patient care
- Advanced care planning
- Battery cases among nurses
- Job termination for nurses
- Abandoning the code of conduct to save the patient
- Nursing rights of medical administration
- Nurses must have a nursing philosophy
- Hiring nursing leaders from the workforce
- Encouraging breastfeeding among new mothers
- Mourning with patients
- Attachment to a patient
- Intensive nursing care is challenging for new nurses
- Pediatric nursing requires extra care
- Role of nurses in diabetes management
- Nurses facilitating cancer screening
- Suicide prevention in palliative care
- Spiritual intervention in nursing
- Every nurse should keep a reflective journal
- Caring for children with no relatives or parents
- Nursing education is demanding
- Nursing leadership is challenging
- Nurse leaders vs. Nurse Managers
- Nurses donating organs to their patients
- Nurses transfusing blood for their patients
- Nurses caring for their relatives in their workplaces
- Nurses marrying their patients
- Sexual abuse of nurses by patients
- Hiring nurses who are ex-convicts
- Rates of divorce for nurses
- Maltreatment of nurses hired by families
- Prescription of antibiotics
- Dance and art therapy for nurses
- Team building activities for the nursing workforce
- Continuing education for nurses: who should pay?
- Educational loans for nurses
- Organized vacations for nurses
- Healthcare boot camps for nursing students to practice
- Mandatory physical exercise for nurses
- Sports activities for nurses to unify the staff
For more insights, ideas, and information, you can also check out our list of epidemiology topics. If that doesn't get you what you want, feel free also to check our ultimate list of capstone project topics for any level of nursing studies. We also have advanced mental health topics to consider as you develop a debatable nursing topic for your paper. If you lean more towards technology, you will find our post on nursing informatics topics an exciting read.
Parting Shot!
You can turn any nursing topic into a debate topic. Ask yourself how you would address the topic, whether controversial or not, in a manner that either side gets educated.
A debate is about arguing why your points are valid and your competitors are not. When writing a nursing debate essay, do it as an argumentative essay. You must provide arguments and counterarguments to show a balanced and mature discussion.
If you feel stuck with writing nursing essays, you are always welcome to get professional assistance from our online nursing papers website. Our nursing experts are online 24/7 and ready to help you achieve your dreams. The better part is that we guarantee to use the most controversial issues when choosing a topic for you and use peer-reviewed journal articles to inform the writing process. As a result, you will get 100% plagiarism-free nursing paper and chase higher grades.
Related Reading:
