title: The ethical divide.
abstract: Ethics is an area of growing interest in nursing and is a compulsory part of nurse education. Yet record numbers of nurses care being removed from the register and media stories of poor practice are rife. This article explores the issues. Ethics is about how we ought to behave towards one another. Ethics can be seen as elitist and too theoretical, failing to bridge the theory-practice gap. Discussion of ethics in health care tends to concentrate on issues with a 'gee-whizz' factor. Health care is a moral enterprise and, therefore, nursing has moral ends.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Social Care, Open University.
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gallagher
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wainwright
mesh_terms: D004506:Education, Nursing / Q000941:ethics / Q000592:standards; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D006801:Humans; D006113:United Kingdom