This text focuses on various issues that impact directly on professional nursing practice. Each chapter is written by an acknowledged expert and offers nurses the opportunity to increase their understanding of the similarities and differences in national approaches to a range of issues. Each of the authors has considerable experience of European health care and their contributions offer a multinational view that will stimulate discussion and debate. They explore a range of topics of importance to professional nursing practice with perspectives drawn from the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Denmark and Ireland.