Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Nursing Ethics
This Article
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Izumi, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Izumi, S.
Right arrowPubmed/NCBI databases
Medline Plus Health Information
*Family Issues
*Talking With Your Doctor
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Bridging Western Ethics and Japanese Local Ethics by Listening to Nurses’ Concerns

Shigeko Izumi

Fukuoka Prefectural University School of Nursing, 4395 Ita, Tagawa, Fukuoka 825-8585, Japan, izumi{at}fukuoka-pu.ac.jp

Among Japanese nurses ethics is perceived as being distant and unrelated to their practice, although this is filled with ethical concerns and the making of ethical decisions. The reasons for this dissociation are the primacy of western values in modern Japanese health care systems and the suppression of Japanese nurses’ indigenous ethical values because of domination by western ethics. A hermeneutic study was conducted to listen to the ethical voices of Japanese nurses. Seven ethical concerns were revealed. Although some of these concerns may seem to share similar values with western ethical principles, the basis for the concerns was unique and rooted in the Japanese cultural value system. The meanings of each concern are explicated in conjunction with related background meanings. Listening and trying to understand these nurses’ voices in their own context suggests a way of bridging the gap between abstract and universal ethics and practical and local ethics.

Key Words: cultural values • ethical concerns • hermeneutics • Japanese nurses • nursing ethics

Nursing Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 3, 275-283 (2006)
DOI: 10.1191/0969733006ne874oa


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
Nurs EthicsHome page
K. Horton, V. Tschudin, and A. Forget
The Value of Nursing: a Literature Review
Nursing Ethics, November 1, 2007; 14(6): 716 - 740.
[Abstract] [PDF]