Following the argument proposed by Tschudin in 1986 that many nurses do not have the skills for ethical decision-making, this article identifies and discusses one ethical prob lem from practice. The problem concerns an extremely obese patient who refuses to be moved by a hoist. The nurses acquiesce to the patient's wishes and she is moved manually by four mem bers of staff. The issues identified for discussion are: the paramountcy of the principle of respect for the patient's autonomy; the (...) rights and obligations of the nurses; and the jus tification for influencing patient choice. The approach used by the ward nurses is analysed and the value of using an ethical decision-making model is considered. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the place of the ethics of virtues and char acter in nursing and health care in general, and in psychiatric nursing in particular. To attain this goal, the relationship between the ethics of duty (i.e. rule based ethics) and the ethics of virtue and character will be clarified in order to defend our main hypothe sis that these two types of ethics should complement each other, since both are necessary but neither (...) by itself is sufficient for nursing. This means that any applied ethics, as in nursing, should consider the importance of the agent's moral character. To support our arguments, we shall use cases from the empirical reality of psychiatric and mental health care. (shrink)