Clinical Ethics Handbook for Nurses

Edited by Pamela Grace and Aimee Milliken


This handbook provides tools for nurse educators, ethics educators, practicing nurses and allied health professionals for developing confidence and skill in ethical decision making in interdisciplinary settings such as acute and chronic care hospitals and clinics. It is useful for all healthcare personnel who face ethical issues in the course of their work and who work with nurses to resolve these issues. While the content is based on a US context, the concerns of nurses internationally are discussed and emphasized. Nurses working in acute and chronic care settings face many obstacles to providing good care and are often the first line of defense related to patient safety and meeting the needs of patients and their families. Some of the obstacles to optimal patient care are institutional, some sociocultural, and others the result of inadequate communication.  Evidence points to the idea that while nurses do have the knowledge and skills to address practice problems of various sorts, they may not be confident in their skills of ethical decision making and advocacy actions. This is a resource to develop moral agency on behalf of individuals and to address broader barriers to good care raised at the local, community, or social levels. 

Available soon from Springer and can be pre-ordered from your favorite book vendor.

Call for Papers: 25th Nursing Annual Philosophy Conference

Conference Theme:
What has philosophy ever done for nursing anyway?

Abstracts are now being accepted for the 25th Nursing Philosophy Conference, August 17-19, 2022, in Irvine, California, USA

Abstract submission deadline: March 30, 2022

All abstracts should be between 300-500 words. While they do not need to be structured, they need to articulate the ideas/argument in a logical and concise manner. Abstracts must meet criteria for one of the conference abstract themes listed below:

  • Emerging philosophical issues in nursing
  • Philosophy and decolonization/anti-racism in nursing
  • Nursing philosophy; perspectives from across the globe
  • How/is philosophy relevant to nursing
  • The relation of philosophy and ethics/politics in/for nursing
  • Rethinking nursing philosophy/theory “classics” in/for nursing philosophy
  • Thinking the new in nursing philosophy  
  • General nursing philosophy (other than above)  

Authors may submit for a podium or poster session.  

Authors may also submit for a panel session. Panels are 90 minutes in length and should have three panelists and one chair who moderates the session. Panels begin with the delivery of a brief overview of the panel session theme by the chair. This is followed by the 3 presentations, and then a moderated Q&A discussion. For the panel, each abstract should be between 300-500 words. They do not need to include structured headings. The “overview abstract” should delineate the theme of the panel session, its relevance to the conference theme, and briefly describe the contents of the 3 ‘content’ abstracts. The 3 content abstracts need to each articulate an idea/argument in a logical and concise manner. The conference abstract review committee will give preference to panel submissions that focus on the conference themes, are cohesive across all abstracts, and show logical rigor across all abstracts. If the panel session submission is accepted, all presenters listed in the panel description will be required to register for the conference and to participate in the session.


Sponsored by the UCI Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing Center for Nursing Philosophy in association with the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS)