of human vulnerability and from this I develop the notion of the more-than-ordinarily
person. This is to say that we are all vulnerable but there is an additional vulnerability
that comes with being a patient and means that patients are, by definition, more-than-
ordinarily vulnerable. And this why it is important for nurses to cultivate what might be
termed ‘protective’ virtues in pursuit of the flourishing of patients.
Second, the idea that nurses should be trustworthy seems to be accepted as a generally
unproblematic notion. However, being trustworthy as a nurse is complicated because of
the diverse range of expectations from patients, relatives, colleagues, managers, peers,
the nursing professional body and the institutions within which nursing practice takes
place. Nurses are often faced with competing demands and sometimes the same action
will be perceived as being trustworthy from the perspective of one party while at the
same time will be perceived as untrustworthy from the perspective of another party.
This means being trustworthy as a nurse requires the use of professional judgment and
discretion in sometimes complex practical situations. In Aristotelian terms such
professional judgment approximates phronesis (practical wisdom).
Third, and drawing from Terence McLaughlin’s idea of pedagogic phronesis
(McLauglin 2003a), I suggest that it makes sense to describe the phronesis necessary
for professional practice as professional phronesis. In so doing I am casting what the
Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the professional body for nursing, refer to as
professional judgment (the centrepiece of professional accountability) as professional
phronesis. If I am right about this then one of the aims of nursing education is that it
should prepare students for learning to become the professional phronimos (the
professionally wise person). In the Aristotelian sense phronesis is a centrally important
virtue and any curriculum that seeks to develop virtue in students must take seriously
the idea of a moral education fundamentally associated with the cultivation of virtue.
Fourth, then I advance the idea of the necessity for a moral education for nurses. This
idea of the moral education of nurses might seem odd for (at least) two related reasons.
Firstly, students of nursing are adults and it is more usual to find children, rather than
adults, the focus of discussions about moral education. Secondly, in the United
Kingdom (UK) nursing education takes place within institutions of higher education and
the general assumption is that higher education involves the teaching and learning of
particular and discrete subject areas rather than a concern with the character of the