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

Nurses and human flourishing for patients

One consequence of providing protection for more-than-ordinarily vulnerable persons
is that it enables human flourishing. Hence, human flourishing is a legitimate end of
nursing. For while ordinarily vulnerable people are able to flourish despite the risks of
harm to which we are all subjected there are additional obstacles to flourishing for
more-than-ordinarily vulnerable people. In providing protection from the additional
risks of harm that being more-than-ordinarily vulnerable brings nurses are helping to
remove or at least reduce those obstacles that restrict the capacity for human flourishing
amongst clients.

The protection of patients is a legitimate function of nursing in order that more-than-
ordinarily vulnerable persons might flourish as human beings. This does, of course,
require an account of human flourishing and I will attempt this in Chapter 3. However,
regardless of the nature of human flourishing it should be clear that those in receipt of
nursing care, the more-than-ordinarily vulnerable, are vulnerable to obstacles that get in
their way of flourishing precisely because they are patients. If this is true then whatever
else is taken into account when decisions about care and/or treatment are made it is
important that a nurse attempts to ensure that it contributes to, rather than detracts from,
that patient’s capacity to flourish. Of course the detail on this does depend on what is
understood by human flourishing but in principle the force of this position is strong. To
put this another way, one legitimate role of the nurse is to ensure that the actions of
others (including professional others) does not unnecessarily prevent the flourishing of
more-than-ordinarily vulnerable persons.

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