Armstrong, Alan

English

Illness creates a range of negative emotions in patients including anxiety, fear, powerlessness, and vulnerability. There is much debate on the‘therapeutic’ or ‘helping’ nurse–patient relationship. However, despitethe current agenda regarding patient-centred care, the literature concerning the development of good interpersonal responses and the viewthat a satisfactory nursing ethics should focus on persons and charactertraits rather than actions, nursing ethics is dominated by the traditionalobligation, act-centred theories such as consequentialism and deontology. I critically examine these theories and the role of duty-basednotions in both general ethics and nursing practice. Because of wellestablished flaws, I conclude that obligation-based moral theories areincomplete and inadequate for nursing practice. I examine the work ofHursthouse on virtue ethics’ action guidance and the v-rules. I arguethat the moral virtues and a strong (action-guiding) version of virtueethics provide a plausible and viable alternative for nursing practice. Idevelop an account of a virtue-based helping relationship and a virtuebased approach to nursing. The latter is characterized by three features:(1) exercising the moral virtues such as compassion; (2) using judgement; and (3) using moral wisdom, understood to include at least moralperception, moral sensitivity, and moral imagination. Merits and problems of the virtue-based approach are examined. I relate the work ofMacIntyre to nursing and I conceive nursing as a practice: nurses whoexercise the virtues and seek the internal goods help to sustain thepractice of nursing and thus prevent the marginalization of the virtues.The strong practice-based version of virtue ethics proposed is contextdependent, particularist, and relational. Several areas for future philosophical inquiry and empirical nursing research are suggested todevelop this account yet furthe

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Towards a strong virtue ethics for nursing practice

https://research.tees.ac.uk/files/16744099/Armstrong_2006_Towards_a_strong_virtue_ethics_for_nursing_practice.pdf

Towards a strong virtue ethics for nursing practice

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Teeside University's Research Repository

Teeside University's Research Repository