On being of good character: Nurse education and the assessment of good character

SummaryThe Nursing and Midwifery Council sets good character as a condition not only of entry to the UK register of nurses but also for entry to and continuation on pre-registration nursing programmes in the UK. This requires education providers to assess the character of potential and actual nursing students yet the guidance offered by the NMC for making such assessments is insufficiently developed and serves to provide criteria by which determination can be made of good character only in a narrow sense. Assessment of character requires making value judgements about others and lends support to the idea that nurse education has an explicit moral component. This paper outlines some of the difficulties in assessing character, explores the idea that good character can be assessed in both a thin and a thick sense, and considers some of the consequent implications for nurse educationalists.