Ethical Values of Nursing in the Perspective of Postmodernism

 Nurses’ ethical values in today's complex world have made ethics a vital and important issue. These values arise from nurses’ philosophical approaches and are influenced by the prevailing philosophical thinking in each historical era. Considering that several decades have passed since the postmodernism era, a comprehensive study of the effects of this school of thought on the ethical values in the nursing profession seems to be necessary. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating nursing ethical values from the postmodern perspective.

 This is a scoping review study, which was conducted based on the five stages suggested by Arksey and O'Malley in 2005. The articles published from 2000 to 2021 were searched in Magiran, SID, PubMed and Web of Science databases, as well as Google Scholar search engine using MeSH terms. The keywords included nursing, ethics, ethical value, nursing ethics, postmodern and postmodernism. Out of the 170 articles obtained, 9 were included in the study, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, after a two-phase review: first, the title and the abstract and then the whole article.

Ethical Considerations:

 Honesty and trustworthiness was observed in the analysis, reporting the texts and citing.

 The articles used were in English, qualitative, narrative analytical and case studies. The focus of the current studies was on issues such as relational narrative and its nature, ethical values and how to make decisions based on these values. Therefore, the findings of the present study are divided into two categories: "the basic role of relational narrative in postmodernism ethics and its effects" and "decision making and nursing ethical values in postmodernism compared to the previous perspectives, emphasizing positivism".

 From the perspective of postmodernism, ethical values emphasize considering each care recipient in his/her own cultural, social, political and economic contexts, maintaining the care recipient’s autonomy, developing a holistic view in nurses, avoiding discrimination in care provision and nurses’ providing humanitarian and empathetic care.