Description

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The aim of this book is to show how feminist perspectives can extend and advance the field of nursing ethics. It engages in the broader nursing ethics project of critiquing existing ethical frameworks as well as constructing and developing alternative understandings, concepts, and methodologies. All of the contributors draw attention to the operations of power inherent in moral relationships at individual, institutional, cultural, and socio-political levels. The early essays chart the development of feminist perspectives in the field of nursing ethics from the late 19th century to the present day and consider the impact of gender roles and gendered understandings on the moral lives of nurses, patients and families. They also consider the transformative potential of feminist perspectives to widen the scope of nursing and midwifery practices to include the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of moral decision-making in health care settings. The second half of thebook draws on feminist insights to critically discuss the role of nurses and midwives in leadership, healthcare organisations, and research as well as the provision of particular forms of care e.g. care in the home and abortion care.

About the Author

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Helen Kohlen is Professor of Care Policy and Ethics at the Philosophical-Theological University of Vallendar, Germany and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of Conflicts of Care: Hospital Ethics Committees in the USA and Germany and co-editor of Moral Boundaries Redrawn: The Significance of Joan Tronto's Argument for Political Theory, Professional Ethics, and Care as Practice (with Gert Olthuis, and Jorma Heier).Joan McCarthy is a Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Ethics in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork, Ireland, and a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, UK. She is the co-author of Nursing Ethics: Irish Cases and Concerns (with Dolores Dooley) and End-of-Life Care: Ethics and Law (with Mary Donnelly, Dolores Dooley, Louise Campbell, and David Smith).