It has been claimed that there are certain acts that nurses as people practising nursing must never do because they are nurses and this is regardless of what the same agent should do; that certain actions are not part of proper nursing practice. The concept of an internal morality has been discussed in relation to medicine and has been used to ground the actions proper to medicine in a realist tradition. Although the concept of an internal morality of nursing is (...) not explicitly mentioned in the literature the underpinning ideas about the proper practice of nursing based on philosophical realism I argue equate with it and a discussion of the method of an internal morality can help to understand how arguments against euthanasia related to the profession of nursing are far from clear. Ultimately, although the idea of particular acts proper to nurses qua nurses is not clear, the concept of an internal morality can help to get practitioners to see how the profession is tightly linked to moral actions, even so the hard problems in bioethics such as the morality of euthanasia remain hard for all and the easy ones easy for all. (shrink)

The final chapter of the book 'redraws the map', to create a new picture of nursing science based on the following principles: Problems of practice should guide ...

ROLFE G. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 98–106 [Epub ahead of print]Cardinal John Henry Newman and ‘the ideal state and purpose of a university’: nurse education, research and practice development for the twenty‐first centuryCardinal John Henry Newman’s book, The Idea of a University, first published in the mid nineteenth century, is often invoked as the epitome of the liberal Enlightenment University in discussions and debates about the role and purpose of nurse education. In this article I will examine Newman’s book in (...) greater detail and with a more critical eye than is generally the case in the writing of nurse academics. In particular, I will focus on the claims that Newman was a champion of the Enlightenment University of the nineteenth century, that he promoted the idea of ‘disinterested’ universal knowledge for its own sake, that he was an early advocate of the pursuit of knowledge through scientific research, and the supposition that he would have welcomed the discipline of nursing into the University. In each case, I will suggest that these claims are based on an extremely selective reading of Newman’s work. I will conclude by employing the example of practice development to propose an alternative way for nursing to find its place in the modern University that does not involve a retreat into what I will argue is an outdated and nostalgic view of the aims and purpose of higher education. (shrink)