The nature of nursing means that nursing ethics tends to examine the ethics of caring rather than 'curing' by exploring the everyday interaction between the nurse and the person in care.[1][2] Early work to define ethics in nursing focused more on the virtues that would make a good nurse, which historically included loyalty to the physician, rather than the focus being on nurse's conduct in relation to the person in the nurse's care.[2] However, recently, the ethics of nursing has also shifted more towards the nurse's obligation to respect the human rights of the patient and this is reflected in a number of professional codes for nurses.[3] For example, this is made explicit in the latest code from the International Council of Nurses.[4]