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Moral Integrity for Nurses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

Earl E. Shelp  and
Clara Ternes
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Extract

Concern for one's moral integrity is often a part of discussions about moral conflicts in health care. The presumption is that moral integrity is good, even though the full meaning of the concept and its relative worth are not completely understood.

The word “integrity” comes from the Latin integritas, which referred to a state of completeness or wholeness and a quality of purity. The subject of integritas included all of life. More recent understandings of integrity are limited in scope to specific areas of life, though the early meaning of an unimpaired condition has survived. But the scope of integrity is commonly limited to a firm adherence to a code of moral standards.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nursing Law & Ethics , Volume 1 , Issue 9 , November 1980 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1980

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References

1. Frankfurt, H.G. Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibilities, Journal of Philosophy 66(23):838 (December 4, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. American Nurses' Association. Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (ANA, Kansas City, 1976).Google Scholar
3. Brock, The Nurse-Patient Relation: Some Rights and Duties in Spicker, and Gadow, editors. Nursing: Images and Ideals (Springer Publishing Co., New York, 1980), pp. 102-24. See esp. p. 109.Google Scholar
4. American Nurses' Association, supra.Google Scholar
5. Id.Google Scholar
6. Jonas, The Concept of Responsibility: An Inquiry into the Foundations of an Ethics for Our Age in Engelhardt, and Callahan, editors, Knowledge. Value and Belief (Institute of Society, Ethics, and Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 1977), pp. 169–206. See esp. pp. 175-78.Google Scholar
7. Childress, J.F. Appeals to Conscience, Ethics 89(4):323 (July 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. For a more lengthy discussion of the subject, see Abrams, Moral Responsibility in Nursing in Spicker, and Gadow, editors, Nursing: Images and Ideals (Springer Publishing Co., New York, 1980), pp. 148-59.Google Scholar