necessary if we are to take seriously any attempt to classify the activity of nursing.
There may be other, more plausible, class inclusion claims for nursing but one
advantage of regarding nursing as a practice is that such possibilities are not excluded;
in other words, it is a position which allows for other conceptions of nursing without
invalidating the idea of nursing as a practice as well as some other thing. All I have
done here is to conclude, as others (notably, Bishop and Scudder 1991, and Edwards
2001) have done that the conception of nursing as a science is, at best, a fragile idea.
We can now return to MacIntyre’s outline of a practice as:
.. .any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human
activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the
course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate
to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human
powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of ends and goods
involved are systematically extended
(MacIntyre 1985 p. 187)
and assess the extent to which nursing fits this description. Certainly we can point to
nursing as a ‘socially established cooperative activity’ so we can say that the first
criterion is met. Of greater difficulty is how far it is correct to say that there are goods
internal to nursing that are constitutive of nursing. The answer to this question would
seem to be predetermined by whatever understanding of nursing is taken as given. To
take a view that nursing is no more than as a series of tasks to be completed is to
understand nursing as a mere technical activity no different from any other form of
work in which that work is solely a means to the external good of money. From such a
position it would be strange to imagine nursing as a practice - so it seems that those
with this view are unable to conceive of nursing as a practice unless they can be
persuaded that there is more to it than this instrumental view suggests. Apart from those
who value the goods of effectiveness more that the goods of excellence, most
individuals would understand that good nursing is not described by such an
impoverished account. Of course, good nursing requires the acquisition of competency
in whichever set of necessary skills are required for nursing as practised in any
particular situation but as intimated earlier (and as will be discussed later) even the safe
and efficient accomplishment of a set of skills does not make a good nurse unless a
good nurse is understood as a mere technician.
If it is correct to say that nursing is concerned with the flourishing of more-than-
ordinarily vulnerable persons then this professional ideal of service (as Sockett calls it)
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