Page 28 - Human Rights

Faculty of Nursing
Adult care Nursing Department

For many years Amnesty International has called for a strong role by the nursing profession in

protecting patients’ rights, and advocating on behalf of nurses at risk.

Furthermore, it has recommended active monitoring by nursing bodies and human rights groups

to protect the rights of nurses pressured into unethical behavior.

AI has continued to note compelling evidence of the harmful and chronically damaging effects of

human rights violations on individuals and communities, some of which relate to medical and

nursing practice. These include the direct impact on health of torture, ill treatment and lawful and

unlawful punishments. They also include the consequences of gender-based violence and harmful
traditional practices, the impact of poverty and the failure of states to meet their obligations to

protect the human rights of individuals and populations.

In these areas, nurses and midwives can play a role in keeping the interests of patients foremost

and working to defend their human rights. In so doing they affirm the ethics of the health
professions.

2.2 Historical perspectives on nurses and human rights

It is not possible in this short section to address adequately the historical relationship between

nursing and human rights and ethics since the nineteenth century.

This section is intended to draw on some specific examples to illuminate wider human rights

principles and problems.

The history of nursing is described elsewhere and is the subject of specialist academic study.

Nursing famously was seen as a humanitarian force during the nineteenth century when the
caring role of nurses was grafted on to the privations and suffering of military conflict.

25 Academic Year 2025/2026