The ethics of care and justice in nursing education

Abstract

The ethics of care and justice provide two complementary viewpoints on everyday ethics in human services and healthcare professions. The ethic of care is centred on maintaining relationships through responding to needs of other people and avoiding hurt, whereas the ethic of justice is centred on maintaining duties, equity and fairness through the application of ethical principles, rules and standards (Gilligan, 1982). The aim of this article is to describe how the ethics of care and justice can be integrated into the education of nurses to promote a holistic approach to everyday ethics. We wish to elaborate upon the role of ethics of justice and care in nurses’ ethical decision-making and training based on the results from the COPE project, one aim of which was to develop a new pedagogical model for ethics education (Juujärvi et al., 2019).