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

Claim 2: vulnerability as purely subjective.

They say that "The subjective quality of vulnerability relies on perception, the knowing
and understanding brought about by awareness gained through the senses." {ibid p.

213). Thus they make no allowance for the possibility that someone who is unable to
know or understand their vulnerability can be vulnerable. In so doing their account fails
to recognise that many recipients or potential recipients of nursing practice do not have
the full range of capacities necessary to articulate the subjective experience of
vulnerability: for example, those with severe mental and/or physical disability; those in
a coma; infants and those with Alzheimer’s disease. It would be unusual to claim that
people in such states should not be considered vulnerable. Vulnerability is not just a
subjective experience. It is a part of our nature to be vulnerable whether or not we
recognize the fact, it is only a subjective experience when we recognize or pay attention
to it. It would be strange to say someone is not Vulnerablejust because they are not
experiencing a sense of vulnerability when, for example, they are merely walking along
the pavement, for all sorts of eventualities may befall them. We are all clearly
vulnerable for it is part of our nature to be vulnerable even when we do not perceive
ourselves to be vulnerable.

Thus while it may be important for ordinarily vulnerable people to have a low
perception of their vulnerability if they are to flourish in the world this is neither
without constraints nor is it significant in the same way for more-than-ordinarily
vulnerable persons. For ordinarily vulnerable persons to have a perception of
vulnerability that is so low as to be virtually absent is to tempt them to begin to feel
'invulnerable'; and, as suggested earlier, to feel ‘invulnerable’ is to run the risk of
actually increasing one's vulnerability. Similarly for more-than-ordinarily vulnerable
persons a sense of 'invulnerability' is generally speaking incompatible with human
flourishing. Moreover, attempts to reduce feelings of vulnerability in those more-than-
ordinarily vulnerable persons whose capacity for recognising their vulnerability is
compromised to a greater or lesser degree will be of questionable value, and, in some
cases, might not be possible at all.

Claim 3: the patient will feel less vulnerable.

IfI have understood them correctly, Clarke and Driever claim that nurses should adopt
psychological interventions to make their patients feel less vulnerable on the grounds
that feeling less vulnerable is a good thing. However, as suggested above, there is no

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