Guided university debate increases long-term gender knowledge and gender sensitivity towards patients among nursing students

• Gender awareness in patient care requires deep reflexive learning. • Guided debate debunked false beliefs and enhanced gender knowledge and sensitivity. • Debate is an effective teaching method to foster gender awareness in future nurses. Gender awareness in health is a complex competence requiring deep reflexive learning. Several studies have found this competence is not as yet reflected in nursing graduate's clinical practice. To foster the gender awareness of nursing students using an active methodology: guided university debate. A quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design was used. A total of 126 first-year undergraduate students responded to three scenarios on the legitimation of a (female or male) patient's pain and completed validated scales for measuring gender sensitivity, gender role ideology and declarative gender knowledge at three time points: prior to the debate, immediately after the debate and six months later. Declarative gender knowledge was higher than at pretest both immediately after the end of the intervention and six months later. Gender sensitivity and gender role ideology were higher 6 months after the intervention than at pretest. Debate is an effective way of increasing declarative gender knowledge in the medium and long term. It also seems to encourage a willingness to continue developing long-term gender sensitivity.