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The American Nurses Association is proud to announce a completely updated Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (The Code). The 2015 Code is the definitive framework for ethical analysis and decision-making for RNs across all practice levels, roles, and settings. It is the result of changes made to the 2001 version of the Code by the Code of Ethics Steering Committee. The committee drawn from across the United States, included nurses in a variety of roles and settings. The Code, consisting of nine provisions and their accompanying interpretive statements: •Provides a succinct statement of the ethical values, obligations, and duties of every individual who enters the nursing profession, •Serves as the profession's nonnegotiable ethical standard, and •Expresses nursing's own understanding of its commitment to society. The Code is particularly useful to in today's healthcare environment because it reiterates the fundamental values and commitments of the nurse (Provisions 1–3), identifies the boundaries of duty and loyalty (Provisions 4–6), and describes the duties of the nurse that extend beyond individual patient encounters (Provisions 7–9). This revision retains interpretive statements for each provision that provide more specific guidance for practice. The statements are responsive to the contemporary context of nursing and recognize the larger scope of nursing's concern in relation to health. It also includes another innovation: links to foundational and supplemental documents, which will be available later in 2015. ANA's Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements is the promise that nurses are doing their best to provide care for their patients and their communities and are supporting each other in the process so that all nurses can fulfill their ethical and professional obligations. It is an important tool that can be used now as leverage to a better future for nurses, patients and health care. This Code is a reflection of the proud ethical heritage of nursing, a guide for all nurses now and into the future.

Nursing is a helping profession; the Guide to Nursing's Social Policy Statement is about the many ways that nursing helps others. It is about the relationship—the social contract—between the nursing profession and society and their reciprocal expectations. This arrangement authorizes nurses as professionals to meet the needs involved in the care and health of patients and clients and the health of society. It helps nurses engage in the political and legislative action that supports nursing education, research, and practice to better influence that health and care, and to understand the social ethics and justice that affect global and individual health. But what does that mean now? The new Guide to Nursing's Social Policy Statement unpacks it for the 21st-century nurse: - Social contract in theory and practice. -Nursing's own social contract and its 16 distinct elements. - Nursing and the common good, and what constitutes the common good today. -Citizenship, civic engagement, and civic professionalism of nurses. -Professions: what they are, how they can get broken and mended, and nursing as a profession. -The interplay of the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements and Nursing's Social Policy Statement. -Nursing's social covenant (by which nursing goes beyond its social contract). -Nursing's involvement in public and global health. Suitable for courses and professional development activities in nursing curriculum, ethics, leadership, research, and role development, the Guide to Nursing's Social Policy Statement clarifies foundational concepts of the nursing–society relationship, the breadth of ways in which nurses might exercise their passion for the profession, a vision for nursing's social evolution, and much more!