Recovering the foundation of faith underneath a profession enduring the pressures of a rapidly changing health-care system.

If you are one of the millions of Christian nurses or nursing students in the United States, you already know that there is no real way to separate your faith commitments from your professional vocation—nor would you want to. Especially amid the bedlam of the COVID-19 pandemic, faith has given countless nurses the strength to carry on and be there for their patients, one exhausting shift after another.

Bioethics for Nurses, the first book of its kind, is for nurses and nurses in training who still believe in treating the whole person—not just their medical condition. It is for those committed to living out the love of Jesus Christ through the warm, relational care they provide for all hurting and vulnerable people—including those in underserved populations—each of whom has the dignity of a human being made in the image of God. It is also for those who rightly see themselves as crucial members of medical teams alongside doctors (and sometimes without doctors present at all), empowered to exercise professional judgment while protecting their consciences.

With the combined wisdom of Alisha Mack, a professor of nursing with many years of clinical experience, and Charles Camosy, an award-winning bioethicist and theologian, Bioethics for Nurses advances a vision for a holistic Christian notion of healthcare with practical applications for everyday relevance on the job. Through a series of case studies in the second part of the book, Mack and Camosy explore the ethics of specific situations with far-reaching implications for nurses working in a range of fields. In the last part, the authors reflect on the future of nursing after COVID-19, making this an especially timely book for a pivotal moment in the history of the profession. Now, more than ever before, the wisdom of the ancient tradition of Christianity is needed to speak into the profound contemporary realities we are facing together as a culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Recovering a Nursing Vision

          1. The Christian Origins of Contemporary Nursing

          2. The Shifting Role of the Nurse

          3. Faith, Science, and Health Care

          4. A Christian Vision for Nursing Bioethics

Part Two: Christian Nursing Bioethics in Action

          5. Made Equal in the Divine Image

          6. From Fertilization to Natural Death

          7. Accepting Death, Never Killing

          8. Matthew 25 and Human-Created Distinctions

          9. The Last Shall Be First

          10. Never Not in Relationship

          11. With Everything That We Are

Part Three: The Future of a Profession on the Move

          12. Protecting Nurse Consciences

          13. The Rightful Place of Nurses on Health-Care Teams

          14. COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Further Reading

Index