ABSTRACT

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

explain teleological, deontological and feminine care ethics, distinguishing differences, similarities, strengths and weaknesses;

explain how these ethical theories may assist health professionals;

discuss relationships between morality and professional ethics, putting a case together to establish relationships between ethics, law and the nurses’ Code;

demonstrate understanding of virtue ethics, and the roles virtues play in ethical reasoning and decision making in healthcare;

explain the natural law theory of ethics, the doctrine of double effect and the principle of totality in ethical decision making;

apply Immanuel Kant's formulation, ‘treat people not as means but as ends in themselves’, to nursing care.