The papers in this section on the legal aspects of nursing can be divided into two parts: (a) the rights and responsibilities of nurses, patients, and the medical system and (b) treatment, with its legal ramifications. How does one decide whether patients' rights or the health professional's rights are to be considered more seriously? Is there an absolute "right" or "wrong"? Since legal rights are sanctioned by constantly changing social and political climates, this may, in effect, diminish the possibility of anything absolute. The question of the "equivalency" of legal and moral rights is also addressed. Due to the prevalent vagueness with regard to bioethical issues as they affect hu­ man and legal rights, often we become absorbed in philosophical polemics without being able to arrive at anyone answer. In order to move beyond the ethical/theoret­ ical fonnulations, there is daily confrontation in the nursing profession -the practi­ cal application of theoretics.

I. Introduction.- Nursing: State, Status and Statutes.- II. Nursing: Legal Aspects.- Rights and Responsibilities.- Human Rights in the Nurse-Patient Relationship.- Whats Wrong About Rights.- Medical Care: The Problem of Autonomy.- Rights and Responsibilities of Nurses as the Basis for Their Contracts with Society, with Patients, and with Colleagues.- Treatment.- Legal Implications of Standards of Nursing Care.- Practice and Malpractice.- Legal Aspects of Surgery in England.- Legal and Moral Rights for Mentally Ill People: A Critical Argument.- Involuntary Sterilization of the Mentally Retarded: Curtailing Procreation Rights of Persons with Diminished Capability to Claim Rights.- Informed Consent.- Issues of Confidentiality in Health Care.- Father-Daughter Incest: Who Owns the Child?.- Prosecutors or Defenders: With Whom Should Clinicians Align?.- III. Nursing: Ethical Aspects.- Moral Dilemmas.- Moral Dilemmas in Nursing.- Law or Ethics: Which of Them Should Regulate Nursing Practice?.- Education.- Should Nurses Study Ethics?.- The Work Environment as a Factor in Continous Ethical Training.- Research.- Aspects of Ethics in Nursing Research.- The Ethics in Nursing Research.- Implication of Ethics and Nursing Research for Patient Advocacy.- Ethics and Research into Nursing Practice.- Ethical Considerations for the Nurse Ethnographer Doing Field Research in Clinical Settings.- Attitude of Nurses to Euthanasia of Terminally Ill Patients.- Decision Making.- A Framework for Resolving Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing Education.- Social and Role Constraints on Ethical Decision Making by Nurses in Hospital.- A Simulation Game: A Tool for Teaching Ethical Decision Making to Student Nurses in Israel.- Treatment.- A Foundation for Nursing Ethics.- Ethical Imperatives in Nursing.- EthicalConsiderations in the Care of Dying Patients.- Ethical Problems in the Assessment of the Quality of Care.- Ethical Issues in the Care of the Elderly Under Socialised Medicine.- Feeding Problems.- IV. Nursing: Cultural and Religious Aspects.- The Economics of Caring.- Culture.- Illness. A Time of Stress Involving the Relationship Between the Individual Personality and Cultural Background.- Religion.- Nursing in Jewish Medical Ethics: Visiting the Sick.- Ministering to the Sick.- The Implication of Radical Christian Philosophy for Nursing Ethics.- V. Epilogue.- The Dependent, Independent and Interdependent Functions of the Nurse Practitioner: A Legal and Ethical Perspective.- The Changing Role of Nurses and Its Implications.