[Moral action in nursing]

What ought I to do? is the classic question of moral dilemmas. It is concerned with the field of action in which human beings meet and where moral decisions have to be made in the course of everyday nursing care. Only when nurses discuss their own actual experiences, can they learn to arrive at a competent appropriate rationale and justification for action. With growing self-confidence, the willingness to act increases. Ethics is one of the relevant fields of knowledge. The attempt to create a link between moral action in nursing and ethics, comes to grief when the "myth of life and death" and the "Hypocratic myth" move centre stage. These myths really belong to the medical, not nursing perspective. Several other medical tendencies for generalisation and some in nursing, create barriers to the development of appropriate models for nursing action. It would be bad advice for nursing to present itself as a reservoir of humanitarianism. An appeal to professional conscience is no guarantee that morally defensible decisions will be arrived at. Only continuous examination of their own actions against a framework of sound moral argument can make it more likely that action appropriate to the desired goal can take place.