The Ethical Nurse by Mary Ann Siciliano McLaughlin Ed.D., RN

The concept of ethics in professional nursing practice does not constitute a new thought process. Rather, professional ethics must address the nurse’s own desire to lead a good life (Higgins, 2010). Isabel Hampton Robb spoke to what she believed to be essential in the development of nursing as a profession. Robb viewed the nurse as needing scientific education, as well as, high character in an effort to care for people on a larger social scale. She viewed ethics as providing spirit and ministry to the profession. This supported her vision of developing nursing into a profession, inclusive of a code of ethics (Robb, 1900).  Crigger and Godfrey (2011) believed that professional ethics and ethics in general are intertwined with professionalism, making it difficult to always see the division between the two.  The reason for my dissertation grew out of a curiosity in this area.   I wondered when I saw breaches in ethics and integrity if those studen...

Nursing ethics addresses issues related to the character of the nurse as well as the behavior of a professional nurse (Crigger & Godfrey, 2011). “Nurse Educators’ goals are to educate nurses to grow beyond sufficiency and safety to become good or excellent”
(p. 36). It is never the goal of an educator to develop professionals devoid of ethical behavior. Rather, the goal of ethics education in nursing is to provide nurses with valuable tools with which to apply when dealing with ethical situations (Dahnke, 2009). A common core in nursing is to consider what it means to care for the sick, what is both good for patients and in their best interests, and how to balance this with the needs of others (Scott, 1996). Crigger and Godfrey (2011) said it best: Professional nurses, if only understood from a social perspective, become empty uniforms whose value is placed in what they do rather than who they are . Therefore, it is crucial that nursing education address ind...