Statement on Open Education • Why This Book Is Open

Knowledge That Heals Belongs to Everyone It Might Help

Knowledge that heals belongs to everyone it might help. A patient never asks what their nurse could afford to learn; they hope only that the nurse knows enough to keep them safe. A barrier between a student and that knowledge is, in the end, a barrier between a patient and good care.

Nursing rests on a moral claim: every person has equal worth, and care should follow need rather than wealth or place. We cannot teach that principle honestly from a book only some students can afford. Cost falls hardest on those already carrying the most, and removing it is a matter of fairness, not charity.

For this reason, Medical-Surgical Nursing: A Canadian Open Text is free to read and use online under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Instructors may adapt it, provided what they build stays open. Openness also means access: the book is designed to meet Ontario’s accessibility requirements (AODA) and WCAG 2.1 Level AA, so that no student is shut out by disability.

Open education rests on the belief that we learn best together. If you find an error, a barrier or a way to improve this book, please tell me. Each correction is a small act of care for the next student, and for the patients that student will serve.

Andrew Lee, BEd, BN, MN, RN, CCN(C)
Professor of Nursing, Loyalist College • andrewleenl@gmail.com