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

1999); and being stalked (Parish 2000). Thus, nurses are vulnerable to identifiable and
predictable sources of harm although in some cases the recognition of increased risk
may lead to protective behaviour - an example of the positive benefits of perceptions of
vulnerability. Nevertheless, nurses would appear to be more at risk of coming to harm
from these, and other, sources than many other occupational groups; possibly at greater
risk than other health worker groups. However, in spite of this increased exposure to
risks of harm nurses should not be considered as more-than-ordinarily vulnerable
because nurses’ capacities for self-protection are not, as a general rule, compromised.

For the purposes of the present discussion the vulnerability of nurses might be usefully
categorized thus:

• nurses are exposed to particular occupational hazards; and

• nurses witness the more-than-ordinary vulnerability of others on a daily basis.

Nurses are exposed to particular occupational hazards

Hospitals are not particularly safe places. The concentration of disease and illness
combined with the necessary use of antibiotics leads to a colonization of harmful
infective organisms (many of which are especially virulent and in some cases antibiotic
resistant) within many hospital areas. That this is recognized is witnessed by the
generally accepted practice of advising immune-compromised patients to keep away
from hospitals wherever possible. The vulnerability of nurses (and other health care
workers) to infective agents was graphically illustrated by the quarantining of Canadian
nurses exposed to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus during the
outbreak in 2003. Hence it is true to say that those who work in hospitals are more
likely to come into contact with particularly virulent types of pathogenic organisms than
are people who do not work in hospitals. However, this does not necessarily mean that
hospital nurses are more vulnerable to the risk of harm posed by exposure to potentially
harmful organisms. Apart for the fact that there are policies and procedures designed to
protect hospital workers in general there is evidence that in those clinical areas
recognized as places of high-risk the likelihood of harm is diminished as protective
practices become the normal mode of operation (Rogers et al. 1998). It seems that
nurses who work in areas not usually considered high-risk may actually be at greater
risk of harm precisely because of a reduced perception of risk. For example, nurses
working in dialysis units recognise that many of the patients will be carriers of hepatitis,

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