The aim of this article is to explore the images of nursing that were presented in the media during the recent industrial action by nurses and midwives in the Republic of Ireland. Although both nurses and midwives took industrial strike action, the strike was referred to as ‘the nurses’ strike’ and both nurses and midwives were generally referred to by the generic term ‘nurses’.Data were gathered from the printed news media of The Irish Times over a period of one month (...) - 4 October to 4 November 1999 - which included the nine days of the strike. Although we limited the source of our data to just one newspaper, the findings do provide an image of how nurses and nursing care are viewed by both health professionals and the public. This image appeared to give a higher value to masculine cultural codes and the performance of technical skills, whereas acts associated with feminine cultural codes of caring were considered of lower value. (shrink)

It is commonly held that National Health Service (NHS) workers are under a moral obligation not to go on strike, because doing so might well result in people's dying. Unless sainthood is demanded, however, this position is untenable: indeed, those most vociferously pursuing it are often those who bear the greatest responsibility, on their own grounds, for needless death and suffering.

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions regarding (...) the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

In this article I would like to express my personal ideas and points of view about strike action, which I think many colleagues will share. I am a qualified paediatric nurse, currently working in the central operating theatre of a university hospital in Germany. At the same time, I am also finishing my studies in health care sciences. Apart from two short protest strikes, I have not taken part in any strike, because there have not been any during my whole (...) professional career at the hospitals where I have worked. I am personally deeply convinced that strikes are important and are a good and useful tool, in particular to protest against ‘rationalizations’, which so far have led only to lower salaries and fewer jobs for nurses, and have brought no improvement in the conditions for staff or patients. (shrink)

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

Over 45 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status. Employment, education, income, and race are important factors in a person's ability to acquire healthcare access. Having established that there are people lacking healthcare access due to multi-factorial etiologies, the question arises as to whether the intervention necessary to assist them in obtaining such access should be considered a privilege, or a right. The right to healthcare access is examined from the perspective of (...) Western thought. Specifically through the works of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Hannah Arendt, James Rawls, and Norman Daniels, which are accompanied by a contemporary example of intervention on behalf of the medically needy by the The Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to deliberate the moral and legal dilemma entailed in the weapon of the labour strike as a pressure tactic on the Israeli Finance Ministry regarding job slots, budgets and, in effect, violating the collective agreement signed by the nurses and impairing patients’ treatment, as opposed to refraining from striking and suffering the heavy burden of work, the lack of trained personnel, low wages, and the inability to give patients proper, high quality treatment.

Among the collective as well as individual responsibilities of nurses as professionals is that of maintaining and improving the quality of nursing care. In exchange for monopoly status and professional authority to control nursing practice, the profession is charged with the responsibility of meeting the nursing care needs of the community. If one claims, as I do, that one of the collective responsibilities of nurses is maintenance of high nursing standards, we must examine what action is required of nurses who (...) find themselves in work contexts in which standards and practice are deficient. Specifically, is the strike weapon one that may or even ought to be used? In this essay, answers to the following two questions are advanced: (a) What conditions must obtain for it to be (morally) right for nurses in a particular health care facility to strike? (b) Does their collective responsibility with regard to nursing standards and practice ever entail that a group of nurses has a (moral) duty to strike? The essay concludes with a consideration of how one balances the collective responsibility to maintain and improve the quality of nursing care with an individual nurse's responsibility to her/his own patients. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Part of the debate on cost containment in healthcare systems may be characterized as applied political philosophy One might say that the current debate between competing theories of justice that started with Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1971 has acquired a small sister debate in healthcare philosophy Major participants in the debate on social justice have become an important source of inspiration for bioethicists interested in a just distribution of healthcare resources. Thus Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been (...) remodeled for healthcare philosophy by Norman Daniels. Nozick's libertarian manifesto Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been used for bioethical purposes by H.T. Engelhardt. The books of Daniel Callahan evidently belong to a family of communitarian theories, though Callahan cannot be said to follow one or another communitarian thinker in particular. In the next two sections of this article I will give a very brief sketch of the debate on social justice in political philosophy and then discuss the sister debate on social justice in healthcare. (shrink)

During 1995, there was a major shift in the United Kingdom in the debate of whether it is right for nurses to strike. The Royal College of Nursing, the former advocate of a non-industrial action policy, moved towards the UNISON position that industrial action is ethical in some circumstances, as well as the necessary thing to do. The authors, both nurses and UNISON officials, look at the reasons for this change and why UNISON’s historical position sees industrial action as an (...) effective weapon in defending services, as well as wages and jobs. It can be right to strike. (shrink)