Nursing Heroes Under Social Pressure: An Review of the Refusal to Care

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in the burdens and expectations being placed on nurses. The excessive or heroic lengths to which nurses are often expected to go in serving the public is leading to physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion for individual nurses and having harmful effects on the nursing profession as a whole. In order to protect the health of nurses and maintain high levels of nursing care within the nursing profession, comprehensive discussions are needed on ways to strengthen social support systems for nurses and improve their work environment. This article contributes to these discussions by examining the contexts in which nurses’ refusal to provide nursing care can be ethically justified.