Nursing

Generally, nursing refers to a profession or practice of providing care for the sick and infirm. While the legal definitions and necessary features of ‘a nurse’ vary between jurisdictions, there are common features. This chapter concentrates on ethical issues in nursing and discusses those from two perspectives. As professional ethics, nursing ethics is inextricably linked with Codes of Practice. These codes articulate standard obligations within professional healthcare, for example for confidentiality, but there are also differences in ethical approaches between jurisdictions, for example concerning social justice. Nursing ethics can also be considered as a subset of healthcare ethics. Historically this field has been dominated by medicine (medical ethics), but since the professionalisation of nursing and other professions, distinct ethical claims for nursing ethics have been articulated. Nurses and their codes articulate care rather than treatment often via the concept of compassion, which is less visible in other healthcare professions.