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Competence in ethical decision making and moral sensitivity are becoming increasingly important in nursing education. While teaching reforms have been conducted in nursing ethics, these reforms often fail to drive the adequate development of students’ critical thinking and ethical decision-making skills. To address this gap, in this study, a “nursing ethics–professional teaching” program is constructed on the basis of Rest’s ethical decision-making model, and its effects on enhancing the ethical decision-making ability and sensitivity of nursing interns are explored. Limited by the prespecified monthly departmental rotation schedule and the need to avoid intergroup contamination, this nonrandomized controlled study used an imbalanced design to divide all 99 undergraduate nursing interns into an intervention group (n = 24) and a control group (n = 75). They received six months of “nursing ethics–professional teaching” training, in which ward rounds and routine ward-round teaching, respectively, were integrated. An investigation was conducted before and after the intervention, in which the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ) and the Judgments Regarding Nursing Decisions (JAND) were used to analyze the differences in the development and the correlation of the ethical sensitivity and decision-making ability between the two groups. After the intervention, both the MSQ and JAND scores were significantly higher for the intervention group than they were for the control group (t = 7.371 and 6.377, respectively; both P < 0.001). Subgroup comparisons conducted before and after the intervention revealed unexpected decreases in MSQ scores in the control group (t = 3.784, P < 0.01), which contrasted sharply with the significant increase that was revealed in MSQ scores in the intervention group (t=-5.925, P < 0.001) and those in the JAND scores across both groups (t=-23.115 and − 24.092, both P < 0.001). Both the intervention method and its interaction with the intervention duration significantly affected the MSQ (F = 25.642, P < 0.01) and JAND (F = 8.910, P < 0.01) scores. Overall, the total and dimensional MSQ and JAND scores were negatively correlated before the intervention (r=-0.300 to -0.237; all P < 0.05) but showed no correlation after the intervention. The model-based integrated “nursing ethics–professional teaching” ward-round shows promising effects on intern nurses’ moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making—unlike conventional clinical internships, which enhance only the latter. Not applicable.