wife, father, mother, child and so on, each of whom may have a different expectation of
what it means to be a trustworthy nurse. The patient may trust the nurse to tell him the
truth about his condition, the patient’s wife may trust the nurse to conceal the diagnosis
from her husband, a doctor may trust the nurse to carry out his instructions, the nurse
administrator may trust the nurse to follow protocol, and the professional body may
trust the nurse to comply with the code of professional conduct. It may be that each of
these trust expectations might be reasonable in particular circumstances, yet if the
patient has not been informed that he has cancer, if his wife has asked the doctor not to
let the patient discover the diagnosis, if the doctor ‘orders’ the nurse not to tell the
patient, if the hospital protocol is that nurses should follow medical instructions and if
the code of professional conduct states that patients “... have a right to receive
information about their condition” (NMC 2004b clause 3.1) then it should be clear that
whatever the nurse does, one or more of those involved will judge the nurse to have
been untrustworthy. And this will be the case regardless of the disposition of the nurse
to be generally trustworthy. Without a simplistic or deontological view of whom one
should be trustworthy towards and given the sorts of tensions in professional life as
outlined above, the idea of a trustworthy nurse is far from straightforward. Apart from
the difficulty in working out to whom one should be trustworthy in any given situation,
the idea that a nurse should have or should cultivate a trustworthy character seems to
rely on a conception of an ideal practice environment in which failures of trust reside in
individual nurses. The reality of practice is such that to claim failures of trust are solely
failures of character is to neglect the effects of both institutional activities and complex
professional relationships.
Nancy Potter’s account of trustworthiness as a virtue
Potter offers an account of trustworthiness as a virtue outlined within the framework of
ten requirements for ‘full trustworthiness’. Full trustworthiness here is contrasted with
the trustworthiness of particular situations. Hence one can be trustworthy in particular
instances or towards particular persons without necessarily being dispositionally
trustworthy. This distinction is important for Potter who believes it necessary to
distinguish these as two different types of trustworthiness. For Potter this means that
being trustworthy in relation to specific tasks or people is not, of itself, a virtue. On this
account trustworthiness is only a virtue when being trustworthy in specific situations
reflects a genuine disposition of general trustworthiness.
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