The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) require that, in addition to successful
completion of an NMC approved course of pre-registration nursing education, an
individual wishing to register as a nurse must be declared as being in good health and of
good character. This declaration must be signed by a registered nurse with
responsibility for preparatory education and confirms that:
.. .to the best of my knowledge .. .[I] believe the above named student’s health
and character are sufficiently good to enable safe and effective practice and that
there is an intention to comply with the Code of professional conduct: NMC
standards for conduct, performance and ethics.
(NMC undated) (original emphasis)
This final affirmation of the requirement of good character is significant for without it
the student cannot register, and therefore cannot practice, as a registered nurse. Yet it is
not clear that those with responsibility for programmes of nurse education have this aim
in mind when developing nursing curricula. The idea of a nurse as someone who ought
to be of good character seems to be unproblematic for those who sign these declarations
(to my knowledge no one ever refuses to sign) even though it is not clear how nurse
teachers are to know when or how to assess good character, nor do they seem to know
the criteria by Whichjudgments about the character of nursing students should be made.
The work of this thesis is offered as a contribution to the understanding of what is
required if a nurse is to be of good character. We might say that a nurse of good
character can be relied upon to act characteristically in ways that enhance the
flourishing of patients. That is to say that a nurse of good character is one who is
disposed towards compassion, caring, honesty, a sense of fairness, and so on, in short,
has the sorts of dispositions that Everyman considers necessary for good nursing. And
further, that these dispositions are of an enduring nature and can be cultivated as virtues
appropriate for the practice of nursing. So the nurse of good character has, or at least
strives towards, the virtues of justice, courage and honesty, as well as the professional
virtues of trustworthiness, open-mindedness and professional phronesis.
The declaration of good health and good character required by the NMC also assumes
that nurse teachers are able and qualified to make judgments about how far a student
intends, once registered, to comply with the NMC code of professional conduct. While
this is idea is consistent with the NMC injunction that internalisation of the code of
professional conduct is one essential aim of pre-registration nursing education, it cannot
be an internalisation by authoritarian imposition for that would be a form of moral
185