What Makes a Good Nurse

In recent years, the human values at the heart of the nursing profession have been sidelined by an increased focus on evidence-based, target driven outcomes. They 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 for healthcare. Derek Sellman re-establishes the primacy of the virtues that underpin the practice of nursing to answer 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, and the implications of this for practice. This original and thought-provoking book will be essential reading for nurses and pre-registration student nurses, care workers, care commissioners, and many others who work in the caring professions.