Values for Ethical Nursing : Some Comments on the Good Nurse Study

　”Ethics” in healthcare is often relegated to debates about dilemmas and decision-making usually regarding end-of-life care or high tech-life sustaining treatments. Taking nursing ethics into the future requires demonstrating the relevance of ethical discourse beyond dilemma-driven discussion to a discussion of ethical thinking that shapes the discipline of nursing at-large. The Good Nurse study has that potential.

　The public and the profession ask health care ethics to provide insight in three broad areas:

　1) Correcting and preventing wrong ─ This means identifying and correcting situations that are plainly wrong, abusive or exploitive practices, such as racial disparities in treatment or human rights violations.

　2) Resolving dilemmas ─ This is the most common and visible work of health care ethics. Ethicists bring ethical analysis to bear on situations of values conflict or uncertainty ― classically described as situations where “well-meaning people disagree.” In doing so, they help find solutions to emergent morally troubling situations and plan for how to respond to, prevent or mitigate such situations in the future.