Soins infirmiers et économies

Nursing and Economies

Call for Abstracts

European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics

Sixth Issue 2024

The European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics is an interdisciplinary Open Access and peer-reviewed eJournal spanning the Humanities, Nursing Science, Social Sciences, and Cultural Studies. The journal is published online once a year with each edition having an individual theme and an open section that contains articles on various topics. In addition, the sections “Forum” and “Lost and Found” offer the opportunity to publish shorter articles on current debates or to present remarkable objects, texts, pictures or movies with relevance to nursing history and ethics and to discuss their significance.

• The Journal is seeking contributions tothe open section
• themed section
• Lost and Found
• Forum

Theme 2024: Nursing and Economies
Deadline for abstracts: May 31, 2023
Deadline for manuscripts: November 30, 2023


Economic conditions have shaped the working conditions of nurses in different ways throughout history. Since the 1960s, there have been increasing complaints about the economization of health care and the social and human costs to nurses on the one hand and patients on the other. The thematic issue aims to approach the meaning of economics for nursing in a broader sense, namely in terms of economies. The focus is not only on economic constraints, but also on the potentials of economic thinking in nursing: What changes when nurses are seen as a valuable resource? What influence does the remuneration of nursing have? Furthermore, non-material economies of labor, economies of care could come into view.


Possible historical topics are:

• Negotiations around the valuation of nursing care work
• Actors of a revaluation of work in nursing care, their argumentations and strategies
• Relationship between material and immaterial values
• Organization of work in care: e.g. negotiations about skilled worker quotas (who does
• what with which qualification?), rationalization of nursing work, outsourcing
• The care responsibility of the employers
• Dealing of nurses with their work capacity and forms of self-care

Possible ethical topics are:

• Influence of economization processes on nursing practice and the ethical implications
• of their use
• Conflicts of norms and values as a result of economization processes
• Moral distress and ‘moral injury’
• Ethical nursing questions of overuse vs. underuse
• Organizational ethics

The aim of the special issue is to bring historical and ethical research on nursing and economies into dialogue with each other.


Please note! An authors’ workshop will be held in Heidelberg, Germany on October 27/28, 2023 to discuss the articles. Participation in the workshop is appreciated but not a prerequisite for publishing the article in the Issue 6/2024 “Nursing and Economies”of the European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics. Travel and hotel expenses for authors traveling within Europe can be reimbursed.

Please note the following remarks on the concept of the European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics:


The journal creates a dialogue between the history and the ethics of nursing, while providing new impulses for advancing the subfields of the history as well as the ethics of nursing. Historians are asked to include the ethical dimension of the topic into their research project; researchers interested in ethics are requested to reflect on the historical dimensions of their projects. This does not mean, however, that articles on ethics should be preceded by a historical overview in the style of a manual. Rather the latest developments and socio-political debates that have led to the current issues in the ethics of nursing should be put in their historical context and be used in the analysis. Likewise, papers on the history of nursing should address ethical questions within the historical context or refer to current issues in the ethics of nursing. The journal publishes research both on European History and the history of the reciprocal relationships and interplays of European and non-European societies. The journal only publishes original contributions. When submitting their manuscript, authors agree that their text has not already been submitted or published elsewhere.


Please submit your abstract (max 500 words) in English and separately a short CV by May 31, 2023 to Prof. Dr. Susanne Kreutzer: kreutzer@fh-muenster.de and Prof. Dr. Karen Nolte: karen.nolte@histmed.uni-heidelberg.de.