financial or material abuse, including theft, fraud, exploitation, pressure in
connection with wills, property or inheritance or financial transactions, or the
misuse or misappropriation of property, possessions or benefits;
neglect and acts of omission, including ignoring medical or physical care
needs, failure to provide access to appropriate health, social or educational
services, the withholding of the necessities of life, such as medication, adequate
nutrition and heating."
(DoH 1999 p. 8) (original emphasis)
Professional protection of more-than-ordinarily vulnerable persons
In a publication entitled Practitioner-client relationships and the prevention of abuse
the Nursing and Midwifery Council state that “Registered nurses ...have a
responsibility to protect clients from all forms of abuse” (NMC 2002b p. 7) (original
emphasis). Nevertheless, the stated aim of the publication is “...to protect the public by
helping to prevent the abuse of clients by practitioners” (ibid p. 3) (emphasis added). In
effect, the document outlines the nature of professionally acceptable practitioner-client
relationships in the attempt to ensure that more-than-ordinarily vulnerable people are
not subjected to activities of abuse by nurses. While it may be reassuring for the public
to know that the regulatory body for nurses takes the protection of more-than-ordinarily
vulnerable people seriously it may at the same time raise questions in the public domain
about the general trustworthiness of nurses. I take it to be important that nurses should
be trustworthy and I will pursue questions about trust and trustworthiness in relation to
the practice of nursing in Chapter 4.
At this point it is sufficient to note that there is a professional recognition that those
who are the recipients of nursing care are more-than-ordinarily vulnerable and that it is
necessary for nurses to be ready and willing to adapt their practice to ensure that more-
than-ordinarily vulnerable clients are protected from abuse. I want to go further and
claim that this ‘protective’ function of nursing is fundamentally related to human
flourishing insofar as without such protection the ability of an individual to flourish is
compromised.
The guidance expects nurses to act in certain sorts of ways (that is, in professional
rather than unprofessional ways) in order to protect clients. Nurses are accountable to
the NMC and are required to practice in a way that is consistent with the tenets of the
code of professional conduct (NMC 2004b). But it would be an impoverished account
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