TY - JOUR T1 - Measuring nursing care and compassion: the McDonaldised nurse? JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 465 LP - 468 DO - 10.1136/jme.2008.028530 VL - 35 IS - 8 AU - A Bradshaw Y1 - 2009/08/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/35/8/465.abstract N2 - In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued that the current market-driven approaches to healthcare involve redefining care as a pale imitation, even parody, of the traditional approach of the nurse as “my brother’s keeper”. Attempts to measure such parody can only measure artificial techniques and give rise to a McDonald’s-type nursing care rather than heartfelt care. The arguments of this paper, although applied to nursing, also apply to medicine and healthcare generally. ER -