Ethics and Professional Conduct: Striving for a Professional Ideal

The authors introduce the Staircase Model for Professional Development as a framework for nurses' growth as nurse professionals. Professional missteps are addressed, along with strategies for nurses to use in making more thoughtful decisions when faced with ethical situations and in managing mistakes and wrongs in practice. The Staircase Model for Professional Development offers one explanation for recovery from mistakes, through which a nurse regains a positive professional identity and may reintegrate into nursing practice.