http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcnurs/ The editor's pick of recent articles published by BMC Nursing 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z Background: Nurses in the Western world have given considerable attention to the concept of vulnerabilityin recent decades. However, nurses have tended to view vulnerability from an individualisticperspective, and have rarely taken into account structural or collective dimensions of theconcept. As the need grows for health workers to engage in the global health agenda, nursesmust broaden earlier works on vulnerability, noting that conventional conceptualizations andpractical applications on the notion of vulnerability warrant extension to include morecollective conceptualizations thereby making a more complete understanding of vulnerabilityin nursing discourse.DiscussionThe purpose of this paper is to examine nursing contributions to the concept of vulnerabilityand consider how a broader perspective that includes socio-political dimensions may assistnurses to reach beyond the immediate milieu of the patient into the dominant social, political,and economic structures that produce and sustain vulnerability.SummaryBy broadening nurse's conceptualization of vulnerability, nurses can obtain theconsciousness needed to move beyond a peripheral role of nursing that has been dominantlysituated within institutional settings to contribute in the larger arena of social, economic,political and global affairs. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6955/11/5 Laura Tomm-Bonde BMC Nursing 2012, 11:5 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z 10.1186/1472-6955-11-5 Debating the concept of vulnerability Nurses need to broaden their conceptualization of vulnerability to take account of the underlying socioeconomic and political causes, thereby extending the role of nursing into the wider arena. /content/figures/1472-6955-11-5-toc.gif BMC Nursing 1472-6955 11 5 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z PDF