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- Title
Needs, closeness and responsibilities. An inquiry into some rival moral considerations in nursing care.
- Authors
Nortvedt, Per
- Abstract
Abstract The first part of this paper seeks to clarify how interpersonal relationships are generally rooted in considerations about trust, vulnerability and interpersonal dependence. However, for nurse–patient relationships, and from the point of view of justice and fair rationing, it is essential to investigate their distinct moral nature. Hence, the second part of the paper argues that nurse–patient relationships, as a special kind of interpersonal relationship, raise particular normative issues. I will discuss dilemmas facing nurses and professional care-givers in general who are torn between their obligations to existing patients and more general and impartial considerations regarding the distribution of nursing care. This discussion concerning the normative claims of immediacy and mercy vs. fairness in health care is a pressing issue for nursing care. The claims that arise from particular relationships in nursing care are typically associated with closeness to a person's vulnerabilities. The pressing issue is how considerations of mercy and protection of individual patients can be safeguarded within today's nursing and health-care practices in which distributivist considerations are crucial.
- Subjects
NURSE-patient relationships; DISTRIBUTIVE justice; DECISION making; ETHICS
- Publication
Nursing Philosophy, 2001, Vol 2, Issue 2, p112
- ISSN
1466-7681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1046/j.1466-769X.2001.00047.x