Nursing: a moral profession?

The questions guiding this chapter are: What is it for nursing to be a moral profession? and What is the point of making such a claim? The former question encompasses two contested ideas, the nature of morality and the nature of a profession. For example, are professions socially constructed or is there some essentialist, moral aspect to professions that is in some sense different from how morality relates to other occupations and even perhaps different from general morality itself? The latter question depends in part on an answer to the former as to whether the point is to say what nurses should and should not do morally speaking or perhaps how nurses should and should not be. How specific the action-guidingness must or can be is a further question also related directly to answers to the two questions guiding this chapter. Thus, the idea of nursing as a moral profession directly involves philosophy especially the nature and status of morality and its epistemology and has practical consequences for the nursing profession, ‘everyday’ nursing practice, as well as the person who is also a nurse and those they meet.