Ethical and Legal Issues in Nursing

This is a very readable textbook that deals with the fundamentals of healthcare ethics and legal issues for nurses. Starting with an introduction to the issues underpinning ethical knowledge, such as values and beliefs, it then leads into ethical concepts such as rights, dignity, and accountability and concludes with specific areas of practice, such as dignified death and research. As such it would be useful reading to support an undergraduate nursing program introducing students to ethical theory. The use of ¿case studies is particularly useful in ensuring that theory can be contextualized and made sense of by the student in real-life scenarios. Academic staff may find these useful as activities to use in workshops with students. Education requires appropriate materials to enable those learning about nursing and health care. Overall the reader is guided from one subject to the next through each chapter in a logical manner that gives a useful perspective to understanding the essentials for moral nursing practice.