Keywords

biotechnology, globalization, nursing ethics, resource allocation, universalism

 

Authors

  1. Austin, Wendy RN, PhD

Abstract

We live in an era of globalization in which our essential interdependence is increasingly revealed. Transportation and communication technology plus worldwide health, environmental, and security risks and a world economy driven by transnational corporations are connecting us in a new kind of way. Incredible advances in biotechnology, the pressing demands of equity and justice in resource allocation, and the need for a universal perspective in health ethics are some of the issues challenging our moral imagination in significant ways. Nurses need to ask themselves: What changes for nursing ethics when the global-not the local-becomes the dominant frame of reference?