What Makes a Good Nurse ─ Why the Virtues Are Important for Nurses

In recent years, the human values at the heart of the nursing profession seem to have become side-lined by an increased focus on managerialist approaches to health care provision. Nursing's values are in danger of becoming marginalised further precisely because that which nursing does best - providing care and helping individuals through the human trauma of illness - is difficult to measure, and therefore plays little, if any, part in official accounts of outcome measures. Derek Sellman sets out the case for re-establishing the primacy of the virtues that underpin the practice of nursing in order to address the question: what makes a good nurse? He provides those in the caring professions with both a rationale and a practical understanding of the importance that particular character traits, including justice, courage, honesty, trustworthiness and open-mindedness, play in the practice of nursing, and explains why and how nurses should strive to cultivate these virtues, as well as the implications of this for practice. This original and thought-provoking book will be essential reading for nurses and nursing students, care workers, care commissioners, and many others who work in the caring professions.

Derek Sellman qualified first as a mental health and then as a general adult nurse before studying for a BSc (Hons) in Nursing Studies at Manchester Polytechnic and a Master's Degree and PhD at the Institute of Education, University of London. He practiced as a nurse for many years before moving into nurse education in the late 1980s. He is the Editor of Nursing Philosophy and is now Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada.