Third reading group series: A radical ethic for nursing

The Center for Nursing Philosophy (CNP) announced its third Nursing Philosophy Reading Group series.

The third reading group series was led by Jessica Dillard-Wright, assistant professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and past CNP student/new faculty fellow. It was co-facilitated by Miriam Bender, associate professor at University of California Irvine and director of the CNP. The series focused on nursing ethics.

In a healthcare landscape that is increasingly complex in which people require higher and higher acuity care, the question of ethics — schemas by which we make decisions and build the world around us — is one of central importance for nursing. Nursing has a long tradition of ethics, though this has been supplanted in many ways by bioethics. However, there are other possibilities for thinking about ethics in nursing. The object of this reading group is to examine bioethics as well as other modes of ethical inquiry, apply them to nursing, and interrogate the goodness of fit of these modes for nursing.

A key tension to guide our reading in ethics for nursing is the dialectic of what we uphold as our values and what we [can/will/must] do. In week one, readings and discussion focused on what ethics is and how it works. Week two takes a topical turn, examining ethics in the context of social justice and the pandemic. Week three concluded with a close reading of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics and readings that engage radical possibilities for nursing ethics.

Series details