The history of nursing is a research area that during the past 30 years has been evolving into a specialised academic field. Ethics of care is also recognised as an independent field within ethics. Yet, in the past historical and ethical issues have not been considered together. Ethical discussions are usually embedded in a philosophical framework of argumentation. Yet, ethical questions also have a history and many historical issues are based within a long tradition of ethical reflection. Furthermore, changes of the social context influence how (and which) questions are raised. Such links between history and ethics are often ignored and even in historical papers ethical dimensions are often only implied rather than explicitly addressed. This observation of mutual barriers of reception is a crucial motivation for founding a new journal.
The Open Access eJournal will create a dialogue between the history and the ethics of nursing while providing new impulses for advancing the subfields of the history as well as the ethics of nursing. The project accounts for the growing area of research in both the history and the ethics of nursing and provides researchers in European history of nursing with a new opportunity for publication. The journal is open to researchers in history, history of medicine and history of science, cultural and social studies, health and nursing studies and also philosophy and theology (and here in particular ethics).
The goal is to attract contributions from researchers of the most diverse academic background. All articles must contain some reference to history. We accept original manuscripts on European history that show the wealth of European nursing traditions but also analyse the history of the complex interdependences within Europe and also with non-European areas.
Historians are asked to include the ethical dimensions of the topic into their research project; researchers interested in ethics are requested to reflect on the historical dimensions of their projects. This does not mean, however, that articles on ethics should be preceded by a historical overview in the style of a manual. Rather the latest developments and socio-political debates that have led to the current issues in the ethics of nursing should be put in their historical context and be used in the analysis. Likewise papers on the history of nursing should address ethical questions within the historical context or refer to current issues in the ethics of nursing.