The Moral Work of Nursing ─ Asking and Living With the Questions

Reviewing and integrating lived experiences in nursing with theory and research, The Moral Work of Nursing is a blend of life story and overview of factors affecting ethical nursing practice during the past 50 years. Reflecting on her 35-year nursing career, studies in health care ethics in the 1980s and recent developments in Canadian health care, Magnussen invites readers to ponder moral questions about the work of nurses in community, hospital, and long-term care settings.Nurses' moral work requires reflection on practice, sensitivity to moral issues, courage to ask questions, and take action when patient care is compromised. They are torn between their professional commitment to safe, competent, compassionate, and ethical care for patients and clients, and their personal responsibility to remain health and fit to practice in ever-changing health care environments.This second edition includes updated content and an entirely new chapter on the front-page issue of assisted suicide.

Hazel Joan Schattschneider Magnussen graduated from the University of Alberta Hospital School of Nursing in Edmonton, Alberta in 1964. After two years as a staff nurse in an Alaskan Native Hospital, she returned to Canada to continue her studies. In 1969, as the first graduate of the Outpost Nursing Program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she obtained diplomas in Outpost Nursing and Public Health Nursing. Hazel completed her Bachelor of Science degree in nursing at the University of Alberta in 1972.