NCM 108 topic 2

• Virtue Ethics can be used to evaluate actions, emotions, and persons and their lives.
• Much contemporary discussion of virtue ethics focuses on its approach to the evaluation of actions.
• Virtue Ethics addresses the question, "What sort of person must I be to be an excellent person?" rather than "What is my duty?".
• Virtues for humans are habitual, though not routinized, excellent traits intentionally developed throughout one's life.
• The virtue ethics criterion of right action can be stated broadly as follows: An action is right if and only if it is what an agent with a virtuous character would do in the circumstances.
• It is right to save a wounded stranger by the roadside, whether or not he has a right to your help, because that is what a person with the virtue of benevolence would do.
• It is ordinarily right to keep a promise made to someone on their death bed, even though living people would benefit from its being broken, because that is what a person with the virtue of justice would do.
• Health professionals will remember times when they had to find strength in the face of horrific scenes of suffering and death, scenes which required them to develop a professional attitude, yet retain their natural horror at the sight before them.
• Modern Virtue Ethics theorists have tried to describe a unified theme in human virtue in terms of realistically facing up to the challenges of being human.
• This theme involves accepting our vulnerability as living creatures and our inevitable dependency on others at different phases of our lives; acknowledging our need to find some sense of meaning and purpose in our lives; and, finally, confronting our mortality, coming to terms with the knowledge that we, and those we love, must all, some day, die.
• Virtues become apparent through one’s behavior and are obviously linked to ethical principles.
• Descriptions of character portray a way of being rather than the process of decision-making.
• Responding to persons and situations deliberately and habitually with intellectual and moral virtues is part of the 5 R’s Approach to Ethical Nursing Practice.
• Virtue ethics is an approach that focuses on character with the assumption that a person of good character will tend to behave in ways that are consistent with their character.
• Moral virtues include courage, respectfulness, fairness, and integrity.
• Resolving to develop and practice intellectual and moral virtues is part of the 5 R’s Approach to Ethical Nursing Practice.
• Recognizing ethical bifurcation (decision) points, whether they are obvious or obscure is part of the 5 R’s Approach to Ethical Nursing Practice.
• Pulling this all together is a sense of self fulfillment, called by the Greeks eudaimonia, literally 'having a good spirit'.
• Virtues refer to specific character traits such as truth-telling, honesty, courage, kindness, respectfulness, compassion, fairness, and integrity.
• The 5 R’s Approach to Ethical Nursing Practice includes reading about ethical philosophies, approaches, and the ANA’s Code of Ethics for Nurses.
• Reflecting mindfully on one's egocentric attachments-values, intentions, motivations, and attitudes is part of the 5 R’s Approach to Ethical Nursing Practice.
• The ability to respond to ethical dilemmas then becomes hinged upon one’s character.
• A virtue ethics for nursing is therefore concerned with the character of individual nurses and seeks ways to enable nurses to develop character traits appropriate for actions that enhance wellbeing.
• Intellectual virtues include insight, practical wisdom, compassion, loving-kindness, equanimity, and sympathetic joy.