The Role of Virtue Ethics in the Nursing Profession

Ethics is the core of care activities. In recent years, virtue ethics has been one of captivating approaches in the nursing profession .This article aims to explain the concept of virtue in the nursing profession and the role of ethical virtues in various nursing domains.

This research is a review study. The keywords care ethics, ethical theories and nursing and virtue ethics were searched without time limit in reliable Farsi and English databases including SID, Iran Medex, Google books, PubMed, Google Scholar and ProQuest. The relevant articles were selected, reviewed and analyzed based on the objectives of the study.

Ethical Considerations: 

In all the stages of the present study, ethical considerations including trustworthiness in citing documents and non-bias have been observed.

The results were categorized under a general image of virtue, virtue ethics, virtue and care, transferring virtue from ethics to practice, the role of ethical virtues in the nursing profession, the strategies of virtue ethics theory in education, the role of virtue in nursing theories and the challenges of virtue theory. Virtue is a prerequisite for ethical care. In the clinical sense, care ethics is enriched by a theoretical model of virtue. The virtue-oriented ethical approach in nursing education is learner-oriented and is considered as an essential part of nursing ethics education programs. Incorporating a discourse on virtues into the nursing theory may focus on ethical competence while meeting discipline-specific knowledge and technical skills. To solve the challenges of the virtue-based approach, ethical theories such as the consequentialism can be used besides this theory.

Ethical virtues are considered as an acceptable operations guide for clinical care practice in nursing. The virtue theory is widely used owing to the closer communication between nurses and patients and the nursing profession can make the most of this theory.