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.