By its very nature, nursing ethics is a subject that the profession is required to constantly grapple with. The history of writing on this topic offers a fascinating insight into how nursing as a profession has developed over time and reacted to the ethical issues and questions raised around the role of nurses and their interactions with patients.

Nursing ethics has not always enjoyed the status that it has today. Its development, legitimation and recognition as a distinctive field of inquiry have been an arduous project and one which has not always been well documented....