Why doing “The Greatest 
                                      Good for the Greatest 
                                      Number” may not be the 
                                      right thing to do: the 
                                      complex moral landscape of 
                                      disaster nursing
                                                     Jeff Evans RN, Bnurs, MSc, PGCertEd, SFHEA
                                                          Award Leader, MSc Disaster Healthcare,
                                                             Senior Lecturer Disaster Healthcare,
                                                                         School of care Sciences,
                                                                       University of South Wales.
                                                                             6th September 2018
                                                                                  © University of South Wales
    OUTLINE
     The moral landscape of nursing 
     ‘the greatest good for the one’
     Disasters
     The ethical reality of nursing in a disaster
     Nursing ethics in disasters
     ‘the greatest good for the many’
     Alternative views
    THE MORAL LANDSCAPE OF 
    NURSING 
     Focus on the nurse and their client
     The greatest good for the one
     Preferences the present over the future
     Explicit in codes of practice and published codes of 
    professional ethics 
     Reasons 
     Action guiding
     Action justifying
    DISASTERS 
     Pragmatic declarations
      “A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a 
      society causing widespread human, material, economic or 
      environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected 
      community or society to cope using its own resources”
       ICN Framework of Disaster Nursing Competencies
      10 or more people reported killed; 100 or more people 
      reported affected; declaration of a state of emergency; call 
      for international assistance. 
       EM-DAT
     Evaluative 
     Exceptions
   From a nursing perspective, 
   disasters are essentially ethical 
         events