Philosophical Perspectives on Trustworthiness and Open-mindedness as Professional Virtues for the Practice of Nursing: Implications for he Moral Education of Nurses

CHAPTER 1

MORAL EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL VIRTUES AND THE PRACTICE OF
NURSING

Given that existing arrangements for nurse education are well established it might be
thought that the issue of character development for nurses is unproblematic. If this were
true then an investigation into aspects of the moral education of nurses would be
unnecessary and unproductive. However, as I shall argue, current arrangements for the
education of nurses do little to encourage the development of those character traits
(care, compassion, trustworthiness and so on) that Everyman assumes nurses will
exhibit. Indeed, Everyman might reasonably expect that a programme of study designed
to lead to qualification as a nurse would place emphasis on character development as
well as on skill acquisition and might be surprised to find so little time devoted to
notions of, for example, care, compassion and trustworthiness in the nursing curricula.
It is not so much that the character of a nurse is ignored as an aspiration of professional
education for the NMC require confirmation of ‘good character’ before accepting a
person as suitable to register as a nurse and refer to the idea of a registered nurse as an
‘ethical practitioner’, rather it is that what being of good character requires is largely
unarticulated.

However, it would be to overstate the case to say that issues of morally acceptable
behaviour are neglected in nursing curricula for one feature of programmes of
preparation for nursing is a requirement for the inclusion of professional ethics (NMC
2004a). Everyman might then be reassured that the teaching of ethics to nurses ensures
that nurses Ieam to become ethical practitioners but this, of course, depends on how the
teaching of ethics is undertaken, and on how far it is reasonable to imagine that the
teaching of ethics leads to the development of ethical practitioners.

The teaching of ethics to nurses

Ethics is part of nursing curricula. However, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that
students of nursing (and nurses generally) accept a hierarchy of subjects with the natural
sciences at the pinnacle providing the sources of‘hard evidence’ for ‘real knowledge’
and other subjects areas somehow ‘softer’ and of less importance. This is reflected in
the idea of a ‘hierarchy of evidence’ (Hek et al. 2002) that seems to hold considerable
influence in health service perceptions of the nature of evidence. In nursing education

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