Nurse participation in legal executions: An ethics round-table discussion.

A paper was published in 2003 discussing the ethics of nurses participating in executions by inserting the intravenous line for lethal injections and providing care until death. This paper was circulated on an international email list of senior nurses and academics to engender discussion. From that discussion, several people agreed to contribute to a paper expressing their own thoughts and feelings about the ethics of nurses participating in executions in countries where capital punishment is legal.

Courage under Adversity: Luba Bielicka-Blum (1906-1973) and the Nursing School of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Warsaw Ghetto was a place where Jews were kept until deportation to Nazi death camps. It contained a nursing school, run by Luba Bielicka-Blum. We explore the contribution of Luba Bielicka-Blum to nursing and specifically, the nursing school of the Warsaw Ghetto by using primary sources of Bielicka-Blum's daughter's archive held by Yad Veshem, supported by secondary sources.

Lessons from the past for contemporary Australian nursing students: The Nazi euthanasia program.

The euthanasia program instituted in Nazi Germany resulted in the murder of 70,000 developmentally disabled adults and children. These murders were sanctioned by physicians but often carried out by nurses. This paper discusses how by utilising this event, contemporary nursing students became aware of historical incidents relevant to the developmentally disabled.

The childhood obesity pandemic: Promoting knowledge for undergraduate nursing students.

The rise in childhood obesity is acknowledged as a major health problem in many countries. Health issues directly related to the childhood obesity pandemic are numerous as are the risk factors in its development. No single strategy is likely to be effective in reversing this alarming trend, rather, nurses need to work with children and families by providing education, guidance, and support to promote a change in the many lifestyle factors that have helped to create this health problem.

The courage to care: nurses facing the moral extreme.

Many European nurses were caught up in the horror of what happened to Jewish people during the Second World War, trapped in ghettoes and concentration camps. The advanced age of the nurses, however, decreases the number of firsthand accounts available. This paper reports on the experience of nurses in one camp, Westerbork, in the Netherlands, highlighting their work and relating their stories.