In addition to the issue of personal risk to the nurse or the client, it is incumbent upon the hospital or agency administration to provide adequate safeguards such as risk-reducing supplies and equipment, to enforce protective procedures that minimize risks, to educate staff concerning risks, and to cooperate with research into actual and potential risks. Nurses must also proactively assess potential practice environments to consider the nature of the work and its inherent risks. Historically, nurses have given care to those in need, even at risk to their own health, life, or limb. Nursing history is replete with examples of nurses who have knowingly incurred great risk in order to care for those in need of nursing or to contribute to the advancement of health science. Contemporary nurses, too, knowingly place themselves at risk when giving care on the battlefield, in places of poverty and poor sanitation at home or abroad, in situations of natural or man-made disaster, and in dealing with persons with communicable or infectious diseases.
Nursing is a caring profession, oriented toward client advocacy.
Because of nursing's long history of standing ready to assist the sick and the vulnerable in society, society has come to rely on nursing and to expect that it will rise to the health demands of virtually any occasion. In a sense, this reciprocity is crucial to the profession. All must know that care will be given when needed and that it will not be arbitrarily, prejudicially, or capriciously denied. Yet there may be limits to the moral obligation of the individual nurse to benefit clients when placed at personal risk. Beneficence stands as a moral duty in those situations where the four criteria can be met.