Professional values in nursing ethics: essential or optional in the global universe?

For any discipline with a practice component, value priorities are a reflection of choices on what it means to be a member of the discipline. For the recipients of professional nursing services, values reflect owning individual priorities for what is most important in living health and quality of life. In the context of global healthcare, priority has been afforded to disciplinary practices whose values are consistent with those of normative, empirical science. This column begins a discussion of what values guide and ought to guide the discipline and practice of nursing from a nursing theoretical perspective.