Ethical Issues Constance L. Milton, Contributing Editor The American Nurses Association Code of Ethics: A Reflection on the Ethics of Respect and Human Dignity With Nurse as Expert

The American Nurses AssociationCode of Ethics for Nurses calls for the nurse to practice with compassion and re-spect for every individual. What are the ethics and challenges of practicing professional nursing with expertise and educating a new generation of nurses while incorporating the interpretive statements into practice? This column differentiates the traditional biomedical views on human dignity and respect while exploring the embedded ethics of respect and self-determination and what it truly means to be an expert of nursing from the theoretical perspective of the human becoming school of thought. Ethical codes are guidelines, generally expressed as princi-ples or statements of appropriate conduct for a profession or discipline that are intended to guide individuals as they make moral decisions. They are intended to serve as standards of conduct forwhat itmeans to practice ethically or have straight thinking in the discipline. For the discipline of nursing, the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (2001) serves as ethical guidelines or statementswhich are intended to guide practice