With unprecedented technological advancement, nursing and biomedical research, and the current healthcare environment, nurses must be aware of their professional and personal views on ethics. Ethics is a standard of behavior, developed as a result of the concept of right and wrong (Judson & Harrison, 2010), and is intended to influence the actions of healthcare professionals. Ethical principles help guide decision making among healthcare professionals in complicated situations. [Therefore] we cannot understand nursing if we do not also understand ethics (Gallagher & Wainwright, 2005). There are many different ethical theories that can be mainly divided into three groups. These are theories based on duty, goals and rights. Deontology is an ethical theory based on duty. This means that a moral person must always do his duty and must do it “without exception, whatever the consequences” (Seedhouse, 2001). However, this theory presents limitations and objections because it does not allow conflicts between duties, flexibility or compromises, all essential for healthcare work. (Seedhouse, 2001) Goal-based theories such as utilitarianism believe that what is morally right is determined by the good that is produced as a consequence of the action. Acts that achieved this result were defined as “good” and those that produced “pain” were defined as bad. (Rumbold, 2000) One objection to utilitarianism is that, because it is only concerned with consequences, even if an intentionally bad action were taken, it would still be ethically right if any consequences were favorable. (Seedhouse, 2001) Dunbar (2003) states that there are four main ethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and autonomy. The principle of beneficence is doing good to patients and putting their needs before your own (Rumbold, 1999 p217) and with beneficence comes the principle of non-maleficence which means doing no harm. Rumbold (1999, p222) describes how in many nursing tasks nurses must “do harm” to our patients, but only when this is accompanied by charity and the long-term goal is to do good for the patient. By not helping the patient eat meals, we are acting in a way that these principles do not support because no good could come of it. Beneficence is considered the ethic of care, as it guides us to work in the best interests of the patient but at the same time for the benefit of other patients, considering their rights to justice and fairness in their care (Kennedy, 2004).