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Big data is a scientific, social, and technological trend referring to the process and size of datasets available for analysis. Ethical implications arise as healthcare disciplines, including nursing, struggle over questions of informed consent, privacy, ownership of data, and its possible use in epistemology. The author offers straight-thinking possibilities for the use of big data in nursing science.

This descriptive-reflexive study reflects on the importance of ethics in human care and its relation with HIV/AIDS patients, identifying the main concepts of ethics in human care and ethics in care for HIV/AIDS patients. Considering the clear need for care nowadays, current ideas present care as the human essence which is present in ethics. The emergence of AIDS, an epidemic that cannot be cured yet, mobilizes society to concerns about privacy and confidentiality, including the need to reinforce ethical aspects, with a view to a better life quality for its patients. Ethical thinking is in line with scientific and technological evolution all over the world. In view of our reflections, we understood that ethics is part of our society and that human care needs to be linked up with ethics.

Traditionally, the healthcare industry has been no stranger to some conflicts of interest. However, as healthcare responds to demands to contain costs and adapts business models that resemble those of the corporate world, new conflicts of interest arise. Nurse executives operating in healthcare systems today must have an understanding of conflicts of interest in order to promptly identify actual as well as potential conflicts. It is imperative that strategies are set in place to prevent or handle conflicts of interest as they occur in order to build trusting relationships with patients, suppliers, and communities.

The work of the 'Human Research Ethics Committee' (HREC) is expanding as the dimensions of ethical practice and research grow in the clinical arena. Over the past five years, the demands on practitioners and ethics committee members have expanded, as the general public demands accountability on the part of clinical and other researchers. This paper presents a case study of an ethics committee in an Area Health Service in Sydney. It represents the views of the members as to why they see their job as important, what aspects are difficult, how they delineate between ethical/legal and scientific issues, and what are the major stumbling blocks for them in enacting their membership of a HREC. The data for the case study was collected using interviews with nine out of eleven members. The audio taped interviews were transcribed, the text thematically analysed for commonalities and contrasts, and a description of the members' perspective on various issues written. Issues emerging include: amount of material members read prior to the committee meeting, the difficulty in educating practitioners (all researchers) to write information sheets that are simple and comprehensible to laypersons, the payment of subjects for their time, the appropriate amount of monitoring to be applied on each project, the difficulty in letting researchers know that the ethics committee is committed to encouraging research and that its questions are intended to ensure the best possible project answering the researchers' questions/aims is conducted, and the slow or no response by researchers to ethics committee questions. The findings imply that reviewing research proposals for their ethical value is individual and members of human research ethics committees need to synthesise these in a committee context to make informed decisions.

Purpose: The profession of nursing has been greatly influenced by war, and the heroic nature of the work of nursing is often emphasized during war. The purpose of this research was to examine the stories of nurses' experiences during combat in Vietnam and identify themes that would corroborate, refute, or expand prior historical research., Organizing Construct and Methods: A content analysis to determine recurrent themes was performed on 18 oral histories of military nurses who served in Vietnam that were previously collected and published. Analysis of these collections of oral histories was conducted, and thick quotes contextualize and substantiate the thematic claims., Findings and Conclusions: This research confirms the analysis of prior historical research on nursing in Vietnam by finding similar experiences recorded in oral histories and further claims that an authentic professional identity is often forged during the hardships and heroic opportunities of war.

At the dawn of the 20th century, postmodern academics stressed the cultural differences among human beings. Philosophers predicated differing value systems based on these cultural differences, and conflicts have arisen among those who hold distinctly different religious traditions. Many people believe there can be no universal system to explain reality and thus form the basis for norms in human behavior. However, at the close of the 20th century scientists and philosophers had come full circle: physics quite literally became metaphysics, and ethical systems made sense. Rush Kidder interviewed two dozen "men and women of good conscience" from around the world and asked them if there is a single set of values that wise people use to make decisions. They answered with a resounding YES! Thus, in addition to the customary principles of beneficence, nonmalfeasance, honesty, and so forth, the author proposes a set of ethical principles based on those universal values, adapted to fit nursing administrators' dual responsibilities. Ethical decision making and behavior, the author contends, help to reconcile perspectives and interests and to keep values and mission uppermost in one's mind. In the process, ethical behavior establishes long-term relations of trust and cooperation, which in turn promote consistency and stability in an unstable world.