Toward a specific nursing ethics: The contribution of virtue ethics

In the contemporary debate between advocates of nursing ethics and those who consider that nursing ethics is indistinguishable from medical ethics, virtue ethics allows us to identify elements that could be characterized as specific to nursing ethics. The aim of this study is to show that the specific ethical purpose of the nurse’s relationship with the patient is the empowerment and strengthening of the patient’s virtues. Nursing ethics draws its specificity not from the therapeutic or care relationship that the nurse - like other healthcare personnel - establishes with the patient, but from the helping relationship that the nurse maintains with the patient. This helping relationship involves professional virtues specific to nursing that are in correlation with the patient’s virtues. Such a relationship is characterized by its discursiveness, with the aim of supporting and advising the patient, and includes an important pedagogical dimension.