• Stigma toward birthing individuals with SUD harms care and outcomes. • Integrating lived experience with theory is a novel approach to nursing education. • Structured reflection and dialogue prepare nurses for ethical, compassionate care. Birthing individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) encounter significant clinical and ethical challenges, often compounded by stigma from healthcare providers. Prelicensure nursing curricula offer limited preparation for delivering ethical, stigma-reducing care to this population. This article describes the development of a novel educational intervention to address this gap. This seven-session intervention integrates patient-informed case studies, derived from lived experiences of birthing individuals with SUD, with structured ethical reflection grounded in transformative learning theory. Ethical decision-making is guided by the American Counseling Association Practitioner’s Guide to Ethical Decision Making. Learning strategies include small- and large-group discussions, structured reflection, and pre-/postassessment of stigma. This innovation offers a scalable, theory-driven approach for embedding stigma reduction and ethical reasoning into prelicensure nursing education. Integrating lived experience and structured ethical reflection has the potential to enhance empathy, clinical judgment, and ethical competence. Ongoing evaluation will assess feasibility and inform broader dissemination as an open-access curricular resource.
Arter et al. (Fri,) studied this question.