On political consciousness in nursesThe argument presented in this paper centres around the proposition that all nurses need to develop their critical abilities in the understanding and analysis of the socio‐economic and political background to the services of which they are a part as a potentially powerful group of health care workers.The topics under examination in this paper,The Welfare State, Social Thought and Social PlanningandPolitics of Health Care, are used as examples to demonstrate the kind of critical understanding which nurses need to acquire in order to deal with some of the fundamental assumptions that influence their work either directly or indirectly.From the argument follows the conclusion that it is an illusion, and possibly a dangerous one, if nurses continue to believe in the unpolitical nature of nursing as a professional activit