Nurses’ narratives of moral identity Making a difference and reciprocal holding

Background:Explicating nurses’ moral identities is important given the powerful influence moral identity has on the capacity to exercise moral agency.Research objectives:The purpose of this study was to explore how nurses narrate their moral identity through their understanding of their work. An additional purpose was to understand how these moral identities are held in the social space that nurses occupy.Research design:The Registered Nurse Journal, a bimonthly publication of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, Canada, features a regular column entitled, ‘In the End … What Nursing Means to Me …’ These short narratives generally include a story of an important moment in the careers of the authors that defined their identities as nurses. All 29 narratives published before June 2015 were analysed using a critical narrative approach, informed by the work of Margaret Urban Walker and Hilde Lindemann, to identify a typology of moral identity.Ethical considerations:Ethics approval was not required be...