Nurses as Moral Practitioners Encountering Parents in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Historically, the care of hospitalized children has evolved from being performed in isolation from parents to a situation where the parents and the child are regarded as a unit, and parents and nurses as equal partners in the child’s care. Parents are totally dependent on professionals’ knowledge an...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Fegran, Liv (Author) ; Helseth, Sølvi (Author) ; Slettebø, Åshild (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2006
In: Nursing ethics
Year: 2006, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 52-64
Further subjects:B Løgstrup
B Nurses
B Moral Practice
B Parents
B NICU
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Historically, the care of hospitalized children has evolved from being performed in isolation from parents to a situation where the parents and the child are regarded as a unit, and parents and nurses as equal partners in the child’s care. Parents are totally dependent on professionals’ knowledge and expertise, while nurses are dependent on the children’s emotional connection with their parents in order to provide optimal care. Even when interdependency exists, nurses as professionals hold the power to decide whether and to what extent parents should be involved in their child’s care. This article focuses on nurses’ responsibility to act ethically and reflectively in a collaborative partnership with parents. To illuminate the issue of nurses as moral practitioners, we present an observation of contemporary child care, and discuss it from the perspective of the Danish moral philosopher KE Løgstrup and his book The ethical demand.
ISSN:1477-0989
Contains:Enthalten in: Nursing ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1191/0969733006ne849oa