IMAGINATION IN PRACTICE

Current focus in the health care ethics literature on the character of the practitioner has a reputable pedigree. Rather than offer a staple diet of Aristotelian ethics in the undergraduate curricula, perhaps i nstead one should follow Murdoch's suggestion and help the practitione r to develop vision and moral imagination, because this has a practica l rather than a theoretical aim.(1) The imaginative capacity of the pr actitioner plays an important pan in both the quality of the nurse's r ole enactment and the moral strategies which the nurse uses. It also p lays a central part in the practitioner's ability to communicate with a patient and in the type of person which the practitioner becomes. Ca n the moral imagination be stimulated and nurtured? Some philosophers and literary critics argue that not only is this possible, but that li terature is the means of doing so. If this is the case then a place sh ould be made for literature in already crowded health care curricula.