Ethical Issues

The valuing of dignity in the worklife of nurses has not been researched in a consistent, comprehensive manner or reported in disciplinary publications. Instead, much has been written about the difficulty with recruitment and retention of nurses across the globe. Anecdotal writings and policies arise from international and national professional nurse asso-ciations that collectively show a desire for improvements in the quality of institutional worklife of nurses through work-place reform. This column begins a discussion for what is meant as the value of worklife as it relates to the concept of human dignity with the goals of the discipline of nursing. Ontological conceptual comparisons are drawn and expli-cated from differing theoretical and nontheoretical nurse dis-ciplinary and healthcare perspectives on this topic. First, how are the concepts of dignity and specifically the coined term nurse dignity commonly defined and understood as concepts and constructs from the lens of a nursing theo-retical and nontheoretical disciplinary origin? From these perspectives, what are the implications for the presence or absence of nurse dignity as they relate to the goals of profes-sional nurse practice? What is the potential importance or significance for nurse scholars to engage in discussions regarding the ethos of straight thinking regarding this topic? Common Historical and Philosophica