Professional Morality is Applied Morality

Professional Ethics what can it be? Either there is a professional ethics in which case the ethics drops out or there is professional ethics in which case the profession drops out. Professional ethics is encompassed by ethics. Williams’ point about professional dispositions is important and important for nursing but they have possibly become in his words a myth. The connection between dispositions and ethics is I think contingent. There is no professional nursing ethics though there are professional norms as a nursing standpoint. Perhaps sometimes, following Dorsey, one can act in a permissible though immoral way as a nurse.