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This article is presented as a defence of voluntary active euthanasia from a virtue perspective and it is written with the objective of generating debate and challenging the assumption that killing is necessarily vicious in all circumstances. Practitioners are often torn between acting from virtue and acting from duty. In the case presented the physician was governed by compassion and this illustrates how good people may have the courage to sacrifice their own security in the interests of virtue. The doctor's action created huge tensions for the nurse, who was governed by the code of conduct and relevant laws. Appraising active euthanasia from a virtue perspective can offer a more compassionate approach to the predicament of practitioners and clients. The tensions arising from the virtue versus rules debate generates irreconcilable difficulties for nurses. A shift towards virtue would help to resolve this problem and support the call for a change in the law. The controversial nature of this position is acknowledged. The argument is put forward on the understanding that many practitioners will not agree with the conclusions reached.

A consequence of the Government's agenda for nursing is that registered nurses are increasingly required to regard themselves as autonomous practitioners. It is therefore necessary to re-visit the legal principles involved so as to be able to identify where safe practice can be incorporated into the new innovative ways of nursing. The purpose of this article is to identify and reflect upon the ways in which nurses are incorporating these principles into practice, and secondly, to reflect on the question of accountability as expressed through the law and through the professional regulatory body's code of professional conduct.

It is essential that anyone involved in research involving human subjects be familiar with the purpose and role of institutional review boards. Institutional review boards are designed, first and foremost, to protect human research subjects by overseeing the implementation of federal regulations regarding protection of human subjects. The federal government requires institutional review board approval for any human subject research that receives federal funding, and many scholarly journals require proof of institutional review board approval of the research before publication. In this article, the answers to 10 frequently asked questions about the role of institutional review boards highlight the important contributions made by institutional review boards to the conduct of ethically sound research. The aim is to generate a working knowledge of the institutional review board's function that can be used by every researcher contemplating working with human research subjects. This is the first in a series of 3 articles examining common issues in research ethics.

Patients with infectious diseases can be detained in hospitals under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. Jennie Negus and colleagues reflect on a case that illustrates the ethical problems of implementing the current legislation in a hospital.