Per the American Nurses Association, nursing is dedicated to protecting, promoting, and optimizing health, abilities, and well-being; preventing illness and injury; facilitating healing; and alleviating suffering through the (nursing) diagnosis and treatment of human responses to health and illness. It also encompasses advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations. This commitment reflects nursing’s enduring dedication to the welfare of the sick, injured, and vulnerable, as well as to social justice. Nurses uphold the right to health for all persons and actively work to transform social structures that hinder health and well-being. 

In January 2025, after ten years, the American Nurses Association published its updated Code of Ethics for Nurses, setting the ethical standard for the nursing profession.  It serves as a guide for ethical practice and decision-making without embracing a specific framework. The Code represents a non-negotiable moral foundation for nursing practice across all settings. Rooted in the long-standing and respected ethical tradition of modern nursing in the United States, the Code is essential to nursing theory and practice.  It embodies the values, virtues, ideals, and responsibilities that define, inform and direct our profession.  The Code serves as a formal expression of the profession’s moral standards.  

Beginning with this post, throughout this year I will be reviewing all ten of the Provisions included in The Code of Ethics for Nurses. Here is Provision 1.

Provision 1:  The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person.

A fundamental principle that underlies all nursing practice is respect for the inherent dignity, worth, unique attributes, and human rights of all individuals; therefore, ethical nursing practice requires compassion for all humans as deserving of dignity and respect. Nurses maintain caring relationships and are committed to fair treatment, transparency, integrity-preserving compromise, building trust, and the best resolution of conflicts.

Nurses establish relationships of trust and provide nursing services according to need. Nurses engage in self-reflection to identify and mitigate bias or prejudice that interferes with or harms the nurse-patient relationship. The nurse recognizes that biases can exist both explicitly and unconsciously.  

This provision describes the nature of health, and states clearly that health is a universal right, and the need for health overrules all individual differences.  Respect is showed to all who require and need nursing care, regardless of the patient’s life choices or circumstances, illness, abilities, socioeconomic status, functional status or nearness to death.  
 
Finally, Provision 1 includes the patient’s right to self-determination.  Patients have a right to be given accurate, understandable and complete information about their conditions so that they can make an informed decision about their healthcare.  Nurses support their patients’ right to accept, refuse or terminate treatment.  Nurses understand that there may be situations when the right to self-determination is limited or outweighed by the rights, health and welfare of others, especially the public’s health, but the limitation of individual rights is always considered a serious departure from the standard of care, justified only when there are no less-restrictive means available to preserve the rights of others and protect the public. 

In our next post, we will discuss Provision 2:  A nurse’s primary commitment is to the recipient(s) of nursing care, whether an individual, family, group, community or population.

Please share your thoughts on Provision 1 in the comments below.