What should other healthcare professions learn from nursing ethics

Nurs Philos. 2006 Jul;7(3):165-74. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-769X.2006.00280.x.

Abstract

This paper analyses the question what other healthcare professions should learn from nursing ethics, e.g. what should medical ethics learn from nursing ethics. I first analyse and reject all strong versions of the claim that nursing ethics is unique, because nursing is a unique practice. I then move to the question of whether the link between nursing ethics and nursing theory can be a model for other areas of healthcare ethics. I provide an analysis of the possibility of creating a theory of medicine and find that there cannot be a theory of medicine, and I argue briefly that this finding is also applicable to nursing. If there cannot be a theory of nursing, this entails that nursing ethics cannot be justifiably based on such a theory. In the final section, I then analyse the success of nursing ethics in resisting certain of the vices of Anglo-American analytic ethics, in particular the reductionism and individualism that characterizes much of healthcare ethics. I conclude that other healthcare ethics could usefully learn from this aspect of nursing ethics.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Ethical Analysis
  • Ethical Theory*
  • Ethics, Medical*
  • Ethics, Nursing*
  • Ethics, Professional
  • Feminism
  • Humans
  • Individuality
  • Interdisciplinary Communication*
  • Logic
  • Models, Nursing
  • Nursing Theory
  • Philosophy, Nursing*
  • Professional Autonomy*
  • Semantics
  • Western World