Nursing ethics and the perspectivity of nursing: Response to ‘30 years of nursing ethics’

Nursing Ethics can look back on an impressive 30-year history. With the use of scientific methods, authors from increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse regions shed light on the 'ethical core' of nursing 1 through the breadth of the chosen approaches, the diversity of the topics covered, and the contexts in which nursing takes place. In this way, the journal has contributed, as Ann Gallagher's article 2 beautifully demonstrates, to the consolidation of the image of nursing ethics as an academic discipline which complements the body of nursing knowledge with the dimension of ethical knowledge. 3 This knowledge was never an end in itself but dedicated to a better understanding and improvement of nursing practice. From the perspective of a value-free science, one can view this 'instrumentalization' of a discipline critically. However, it can be objected that also in science there is a relationship between means and ends: In line with the ethos of epistemic rationality, 4 means should refrain from making judgemental verdicts. But this hopefully does not apply to the ends of science itself: a practice of nursing that is empirically informed, theoretically founded, and ethically reflective is one of the pillars of health care security. In this sense, Nursing Ethics has done the one without leaving out the other. Looking back at the journal's rich history, many topics emerge that run like a red thread through the 30 years of the journal, such as research on moral distress, moral sensitivity, or ethics education of nurses. It is striking how much research focuses on the behaviour of individuals. This may leave the impression that nursing ethics is rather considered as an ethics for the nurse rather than an ethics from the perspective of nursing. My hope for the future of the journal would be to see Nursing Ethics more clearly profiling an ethics from the perspective of nursing with a strong public health focus, drawing 'bigger strokes' of a fairer society and describing the roles of nurses in it, but also the roles of other professionals such as doctors, midwives, and physiotherapists, without whom nursing could not be what it is. An ethics from the perspective of nursing could also help to better identify highly researched and still 'burning' topics such as moral distress and moral injury as serious threats to the quality of healthcare and to seek more effective solutions at the system level. Considering the perspectivity of nursing ethics could also help to better highlight recipients of careindividuals, populations, healthcare systems, societies, and ecosystems. With such a vision of ethics from a