ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an anthropological approach to consider the social world of a group of British hospital nurses, in order to glimpse the moral imperatives that underpin their practice and thus contribute to debates about the morality of care. It focuses on a fundamental, multifaceted problem in nursing arising from perceptions of personhood, the construction of difference and the often inevitable intimacy of the nurse-patient relationship. The suggestion that nurses might have a 'different voice' has had a strong appeal for an occupational group that has struggled for recognition and independence. The traditional fragmentation of the nursing role has been seen as a way of preventing the development of a sustained nurse-patient relationship and one of a number of measures employed to reduce nurses' anxiety. Nurses' emotional closeness similarly endorsed their claim to be the most authentic representative of the patient, the best placed to be the patient's voice.
