student as such. Nevertheless, the NMC does make explicit the need for those admitted
to the national register of nurses to be of good character (NMC 2004a).
Fifth, I consider what it means for a nurse to be of good character. The NMC requires
that those responsible for pre-registration nursing education sign a declaration of good
health and good character before a student who has otherwise successfully completed
the preparatory course is allowed to register as a nurse. The idea that a nurse should be
of good character attracts only fleeting attention from the NMC when it appears briefly
in the guidance for education providers. Yet if nurses are required to be of good
character one would expect the NMC to have spelled out exactly what is meant by this,
if only so that those charged with preparatory nursing education can design curricula
appropriately. As it stands, it is not clear what the NMC means by ‘of good character’
nor is it clear how and when nurse teachers are to assess students’ characters. In arguing
the case for a virtue ethics conception of the moral education of nurses this thesis makes
a contribution to explicating the idea of a good character suitable for nursing practice
and therefore suitable as a model by which nurse teachers might aim to cultivate the
appropriate sorts of caring virtues in students of nursing.
These five themes are threaded throughout this thesis as I develop the idea of nursing as
a practice in the sense that Alasdair MacIntyre (1985) uses that term. A number of
authors have argued that teaching is a practice in this sense (see, for example, Dunne
2003) and in Chapter 3 I argue that there is benefit to be gained in understanding
nursing as a MacIntyrean practice; a practice, moreover, that is both a moral and a
professional practice. In this respect teaching and nursing (along with a number of other
occupational groups) share some common moral grounding for their practice. As such,
much that will be said in this thesis will be applicable to both teaching and nursing,
although it should be recognised from the outset that differences between the two
practices do exist. Because the main focus of this thesis is the practice of nursing
considerations of teaching as a practice are limited to those discussions that contribute
to development of moral practitioners of nursing.
Nursing, like teaching, contends with a number of internal and external pressures some
of which have the potential to undermine basic assumptions about the practice itself.
External pressures come thick and fast in terms of policy directives, targets, the need to
demonstrate value for money and so on. Internal pressures arise in large measure from a
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