within nursing. I have suggested that the motivation for many who wish to become
nurses is explained in a desire to be of help to others; an altruism which has been
characterised as an appropriate disposition for nursing. Typically, when asked the
question ‘why do you want to be a nurse?’ as part of an admissions interview for a pre-
registration nursing course, many prospective students will answer to the effect ‘because
I want to help people’. Anecdotal as this may be it is the common experience of
nursing admissions tutors (at least in the UK) and points to a not unreasonable view that
students of nursing are not (at least not in the first instance) primarily interested in
external rewards. The external rewards that nursing offers are, generally speaking,
easier to acquire elsewhere or in other ways.
While there are exceptions to this generalisation (for example, the influx of men into
psychiatric nursing during periods of high unemployment) it remains the case that
nursing is not easy work and the general perception of nurses themselves is that external
rewards of a similar value can be obtained from employment in much less demanding
occupations. So while the exact nature of the internal rewards might not be clear to
prospective students it is, nevertheless, reasonable to suppose that most prospective
candidates recognise that there are internal rewards to be had from being a nurse, even if
that initial recognition is limited to an idea that there is some personal satisfaction to be
gained from nursing.
It is also reasonable to suggest that other internal rewards become important for those
who can be identified as good nurses and that these internal rewards become apparent to
the student as she or he moves from mere performance of task to purposeful and goal
oriented action in the giving of care; the equivalent in MacIntyre’s terms of progression
from the inexpert placing of pawns, knights, queens, bishops and so on around the chess
board to an appreciation of the skilful and purposeful positioning of particular chess
pieces with a specific goal or set of goals in mind. The later stages of both represent a
certain level of perspicacity together with an engagement with an activity not merely as
an activity but as a practice in this MacIntyrean sense.
Of course, as Edwards points out, nursing could be both a science and a practice for it is
clear that MacIntyre understands science (conducted properly) as a practice. Thus the
rejection of nursing as a science is not a necessary phase in coming to view of nursing
as a practice. Nevertheless, a critical review of the claim that nursing is a science is
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