Measuring nursing care and compassion: the McDonaldised nurse?

In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bradshaw, A. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: 2009
In: Journal of medical ethics
Year: 2009, Volume: 35, Issue: 8, Pages: 465-468
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued that the current market-driven approaches to healthcare involve redefining care as a pale imitation, even parody, of the traditional approach of the nurse as “my brother’s keeper”. Attempts to measure such parody can only measure artificial techniques and give rise to a McDonald’s-type nursing care rather than heartfelt care. The arguments of this paper, although applied to nursing, also apply to medicine and healthcare generally.
ISSN:1473-4257
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of medical ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1136/jme.2008.028530