Nursing ethics and conceptualizations of nursing: profession, practice and work

Background. Nursing has been understood as a calling, vocation, profession, and most recently, a practice. Each of these conceptualizations has associated with it an ethics that has emphasized particular aspects of nursing reflecting the social position of nursing in a given historical period. The ethics associated with current understandings of nursing as a profession and a practice are, we believe, no longer adequate to address the social realities and moral challenges of health care work.Aim. The aim of this paper is to discuss the limitations of the ethics associated with profession and practice and to show why the concept of work can contribute to a nursing ethics.Discussion. The characteristics that have socially defined professionals, among them the possession of a unique body of knowledge, provision of an altruistic service to society, and autonomy in the sense of control over their work and work conditions, only partially reflect the realities of contemporary health care work. This is true even for physicians, an exemplar of a professional group. The ethics associated with the professions has tended to limit what counts as a moral concern and who is authorized to label the