L’infermiere come agente morale della professione, la sensibilità etica e i valori professionali

The purpose of this thesis is aimed to answer to the question: nurse's ethical sensitivity today is consistent with the definition of nurse as moral agent of the profession? In order to answer, nurses will be defined as moral agent of the profession through the revision of most representive ethical currents in bioethics (Principialism, ethics of virtues, ethics of natural law and ethics of respect for people) motivating so his ethical/deontological involvement within the intellectual professions and the health system; we will proceed to identify which values underlie the profession and form the foundation for the professional moral agent, starting from those explained in the UN declaration in 1948 and researching them in the most representative codes of ethics, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, International Council of Nurses. The concepts that define the professionals, caring, advocacy, accountability and cooperation, will be a useful basis, together with the compassion defined as a qualifying component, to help to define the moral agent. Then the Nurses Professional Values Scale-R (NPVS) questionnaire, of the American colleagues Darlene Weis and Mary Jane Schank, will be administered to a representative sample of professionals in order to identify the ethical sensitivity of the same today; in the conclusions will be compared the data collected through the questionnaire with the definition of nurse as moral agent of the profession.