A nursing pledge

Student’s and graduate’s moral obligations placed against a school or the whole society, profession, group. Pledge’s text has been changing, however it has always contained deep humanistic and professional values.

Commonly known is the Florence Nightingale Pledge formulated in 1893 and for many years seen as a prototype of a code of ethics. One can find a pledge text saying about fidelity to the Red Cross ideas and professional ethics’ rules in the PRC Warsaw Nursing School monograph. A current, binding pledge can be found in the Polish Nurse and Midwife Code of Professional Ethics (Annex to the 4^th Nurses’ and Midwives’ National Assembly Statement No 9 on December 9^th, 2003). During the ceremony the nursing hymn is also sung.

A pledge's meaning

• Normative – obligation to introducing professional ethics’ rules in practice.
• Ethical – referring nursing behaviours to the code’s rules, consequences in case of insubordination.

Elaboration: Krystyna Wolska-Lipiec