Determination of moral negligence in the context of the undermedicaiton ofpain by nurses

The problem of undermedication of pain in health care is widely recognized and acknowledged; however, there is an obvious lack of exploration of this problem from an ethical perspective. When undermedication is raised as a mo ral concern, the underlying premise is that a patient may experience harm o r not benefit from ineffective pain management practices. I will argue that the harm is of a particular type, that is, moral negligence. My intention is to increase nurses' awareness of both the type of moral harm they are ca using, and their professional and moral duties to provide appropriate medic ation, more particularly to avoid undermedication. I hope that this heighte ned awareness will be incorporated into practice. As a nurse, I chose to fo cus on nursing for this article, but my claims are applicable to other heal th professions, such as medicine.