A barrier to the development and refinement of ethics education in and across health professional schools is that there is not an agreed upon instrument or method for assessment in ethics education. The most widely used ethics education assessment instrument is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) I & II. This instrument is not specific to the health professions. But it has been modified for use in, and influenced the development of other instruments in, the health professions. The DIT contains certain (...) philosophical assumptions (“Kohlbergian” or “neo-Kohlbergian”) that have been criticized in recent years. It is also expensive for large institutions to use. The purpose of this article is to offer a rubric—which the authors have named the Health Professional Ethics Rubric—for the assessment of several learning outcomes related to ethics education in health science centers. This rubric is not open to the same philosophical critiques as the DIT and other such instruments. This rubric is also practical to use. This article includes the rubric being advocated, which was developed by faculty and administrators at a large academic health science center as a part of a campus-wide ethics education initiative. The process of developing the rubric is described, as well as certain limitations and plans for revision. (shrink)

Medical school curricula and postgraduate education programmes expend considerable resources teaching medical ethics. Simultaneously, whistleblowers’ agitation continues, at great personal cost, to prompt major intrainstitutional and public inquiries that reveal problems with the application of medical ethics at particular clinical “coalfaces”.Virtue ethics, emphasising techniques promoting an agent’s character and instructing their conscience, has become a significant mode of discourse in modern medical ethics. Healthcare whistleblowers, whose complaints are reasonable, made in good faith, in the public interest, and not vexatious, we (...) argue, are practising those obligations of professional conscience foundational to virtue based medical ethics. Yet, little extant virtue ethics scholarship seriously considers the theoretical foundations of healthcare whistleblowing.The authors examine whether healthcare whistleblowing should be considered central to any medical ethics emphasising professional virtues and conscience. They consider possible causes for the paucity of professional or academic interest in this area and examine the counterinfluence of a continuing historical tradition of guild mentality professionalism that routinely places relationships with colleagues ahead of patient safety.Finally, it is proposed that a virtue based ethos of medical professionalism, exhibiting transparency and sincerity with regard to achieving uniform quality and safety of health care, may be facilitated by introducing a technological imperative using portable computing devices. Their use by trainees, focused on ethical competence, provides the practical face of virtue ethics in medical education and practice. Indeed, it assists in transforming the professional conscience of whistleblowing into a practical, virtue based culture of self reporting and personal development. (shrink)

The professional regulatory system known as medical ethics has been one of the most visionary and socially valuable creations of the medical profession. Its beneficial influence has extended beyond physician/patient relations, to the shaping of many key humanistic and egalitarian features of the world’s legal and political institutions. The continued existence of medical ethics as a professionally influential normative system, however, is being challenged by international human rights. The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, is likely to be (...) an important point of intersection in this process. (shrink)

Although the field of surgical ethics focuses primarily on informed consent, surgical decision‐making, and research ethics, some surgeons have started to consider ethical questions regarding justice and solidarity with poor and minoritized populations. To date, those calling for social justice in surgical care have emphasized increased diversity within the ranks of the surgical profession. This article, in contrast, foregrounds the agency of those most affected by injustice by bringing to bear an ethic of accompaniment. The ethic of accompaniment is born (...) from a theological tradition that has motivated work to improve health outcomes in those at the margins through its emphasis on listening, solidarity against systemic drivers of disease, and proximity to individuals and communities. Through a review of surgical ethics and exploration of a central patient case, we argue for applying an ethic of accompaniment to the care of surgical patients and their communities. (shrink)

Crucible experiences are essential in the development of leaders. Crucibles refer to trials and challenges that test and mold the character, values and behavior of leaders. Through in-depth interviews with 32 public relations leaders, we examined how crucible experiences specifically shaped them to practice servant leadership. Through the narratives they constructed about these experiences, we were able to learn specific details about these experiences, the lessons they gleaned and how they shaped and transformed their character, virtues and leadership style. These (...) insights matter, because public relations leaders have the potential to serve as ethical role models for their employees and colleagues. (shrink)

This study conducted life story interviews with 40 members of the PRSA College of Fellows to examine the influence of crucibles (i.e. trials, challenges or growth opportunities) in the moral development and psychology of public relations exemplars. The outcomes were the development of an illustration of their moral and leader development journey drawing on Rest’s four-component model of ethical decision making, and a moral psychology profile of the key characteristics of public relations exemplars. The profile that emerged is that of (...) leaders who exemplify moral courage, resilience, generosity, genuine care about others and are willing to listen and learn. When they faced trials, they emerged stronger and stayed true to their values and character. (shrink)

Physicians participate in several kinds of activities in their professional lives. Clinical care is the core function of the physician. Medical education is overwhelmingly oriented toward this func...

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

Medical devices are often referred to as being invasive or non-invasive. Though invasiveness is relevant, and central, to how devices are understood and regarded in medicine and bioethics, a consensus concept or definition of invasiveness is lacking. To begin to address this problem, this essay explores four possible descriptive meanings of invasiveness: how devices are introduced to the body, where they are located in the body, whether they are foreign to the body, and how they change the body. An argument (...) is offered that invasiveness is not purely descriptive, but implicates normative concepts of danger, intrusion, and disruption. In light of this, a proposal is offered for how to understand use of the concept of invasiveness in discussions of medical devices. (shrink)

The debate about physician-assisted suicide has long been entwined with the nature of the doctor–patient relationship. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide insist that the traditional goals of medicine do not and should not include intentionally bringing about or hastening a patient’s death, whereas proponents of physician-assisted suicide argue that this practice is an appropriate tool for doctors to relieve a patient’s suffering. In this article, I discuss these issues in light of the relevance of a Christian account of the doctor–patient relationship. (...) I argue that Christians typically object to assist suicide independently of the doctor–patient relationship. I argue that a focus on the Christian virtues of charity, compassion, and humility helps to explain why doctors should not assist their patients in suicide. (shrink)

The academic literature on management consulting raises many questions about the ethics of management consulting. The uncertain, emergent, and often socially constructed nature of management consultancy knowledge limits the scope both for regulating the industry in the manner of the established professions, and for evaluating management consultants’ work objectively. The character of management consultants is therefore a central issue in how far clients and other stakeholders can trust them. This paper considers three questions, using Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethicsas a guide. These are, (...) first, ‘What is the function of a management consultant?’, second, ‘How should a management consultant act in order to be a good management consultant?’, and third, ‘Where does the boundary lie between the ethical responsibilities of the management consultant and those of the client and other stakeholders?’ Aristotelian virtue ethics are valuable in answering these questions. Their focus on character is well suited to the distinct ethical problems of management consulting. Aristotle’s overarching concern with human flourishing, and an ethically balanced approach towards benefiting from the good things to which a virtuous person may aspire, has more promise as an influence on consultants’ behaviour than the lists of prohibitions that typify codes of ethical practice in the industry. Aristotle’s call for leaders to habituate their people to ethical behaviour should be heard by the leaders of management consultancy firms. In accordance with Aristotle’s philosophy, this paper proposes a positive target at which management consultants can aim in shooting for ethical practice. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation, as an activity that may be provided by clinical ethics committees and consultants, is nowadays a well-established practice in North America. Although it has been increasingly implemented in Europe and elsewhere, no agreement can be found among scholars and practitioners on the appropriate role or approach the consultant should play when ethically problematic cases involving conflicts and uncertainties come up. In particular, there is no consensus on the acceptability of consultants making recommendations, offering moral advice upon request, (...) and expressing personal opinions. We translate these issues into the question of whether the consultant should be neutral when performing an ethics consultation. We argue that the notion of neutrality 1) functions as a hermeneutical key to review the history of CEC as a whole; 2) may be enlightened by a precise assessment of the nature and goals of CEC; 3) refers to the normative dimension of CEC. Here, we distinguish four different meanings of neutrality: a neutral stance toward the parties involved in clinical decision making, toward the arguments offered to frame the discussion, toward the values and norms involved in the case, and toward the outcome of decision making, that is to say the final decision and action that will be implemented. Lastly, we suggest a non-authoritarian way to intend the term “recommendation” in the context of clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

‘Doing good medical ethics’ involves attending to both the biomedical and existential aspects of illness. For this, we need to bring in a phenomenological perspective to the clinical encounter, adopt a virtue-based ethic and resolve to re-evaluate the goals of medicine, in particular the alleviation of suffering and the role of compassion in everyday ethics.

This article is a review of the literature on the subject of how nurses who provide palliative care are affected by ethical issues. Few publications focus directly on the moral experience of palliative care nurses, so the review was expanded to include the moral problems experienced by nurses in the care of the terminally ill patients. The concepts are first defined, and then the moral attitudes of nurses, the threats to their moral integrity, the moral problems that are perceived by (...) nurses, and the emotional consequences of these moral problems are considered in turn. The results show that the moral behaviour of nurses, which is theoretically grounded in commitment to care and to the patient, appears to be shaped by specific processes that lead to engagement or to mental and behavioural disengagement in morally difficult situations. Nurses often appear to fail to recognize the moral dimensions of the problems they experience and also to lack the skills they need to resolve moral problems adequately. Although the findings show that several elements that are beyond the control of nurses, owing to their lack of autonomy and authority, influence their moral experience, intrinsic factors such as feelings of insecurity and powerlessness have a profound effect on nurses’ perceptions and attitudes in the face of moral problems. The moral problems perceived by these nurses are related to end-of-life issues, communication with patients, the suffering of patients, and the appropriateness of the medical treatment. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific understandings of compassion converge, both stressing its necessity for the moral life and human flourishing. I conceptualise a dynamic and frangible account of professional virtues, including compassion, and propose that mechanistic organisational systems of care and the biomedical paradigm create a strong risk of dehumanisation and the obliteration of compassion in healthcare. Additionally, the neoliberal market ideology, with its instrumental approach to individuals and commodification of healthcare creates a corrosive influence that alienates clinicians from their patients and (...) severely curtails the scope for compassionate practice. The tension between efficiency and patient orientated care – although they need not be mutually exclusive – has become more acute in the current economic climate, at a time when the boundaries of medicine have broadened and expectations for healthcare have risen. This has created an unsustainable dynamic within which alienated healthcare professionals struggle to fulfil their healing roles and patients experience abandonment and more anxiety. (shrink)

It is time for the noon conference. Your job is to impart a career-changing experience in ethics to a group of students and interns gathered from four different schools with varying curriculums in ethics. They have just finished 1½ h of didactic sessions and lunch. One third of them were on call last night. Your first job is to keep them awake. The authors argue that this “tragic case” approach to ethics education is of limited value because it limits understanding (...) of moral problems to dilemmas; negates the moral agency of the student; encourages solutions that are merely intellectual; and suggests that ethical encounters are a matter for experts. The authors propose an alternative that focuses on three issues: the provider-patient relationship, the relationships between providers in the everyday world of health work and, the social position of healthcare providers in society. In this approach, teachers are not experts but more like guides on a journey who help students to learn that much of ethical practice comprises living through difficult situations of caring for vulnerable others and who help students to navigate some of these difficulties. (shrink)

A dialogue between virtue and care ethics is formed as a step towards meeting Pellegrino's challenge to create a more comprehensive moral philosophy. It is also a dialogue between nursing and medicine since each practice draws on the Greek Virtue Tradition and the Judeo-Christian Tradition of care differently. In the Greek Virtue Tradition, the point of scrutiny lies in the inner character of the actor, whereas in the Judeo-Christian Tradition the focus is relational, i.e. how virtues are lived out in (...) specific relationships, particularly unequal relationships where vulnerability of one of the members is an issue. In a care ethic relational qualities such as attunement rather than inner qualities are the point of scrutiny. A dialogue between these two traditions makes it possible to consider the relational virtues and skills of openness and responsiveness that are required for a respectful meeting of the other. (shrink)

In 1785, George Washington described a “knowing farmer” as “one who can convert every thing he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards Gold.” With these words, Washington linked the “knowing farmer” to the alchemist who endeavored to transform base metals into gold with the aid of a philosopher's stone. In each instance, the challenge was to convert raw materials into something new and precious.Today, the “knowing bioethicist” is in a similar position. American bioethics harbors a variety of ethical (...) methods that emphasize different ethical factors, including principles, circumstances, character, interpersonal needs, and personal meaning. Each method reflects an important aspect of ethical experience, adds to the others, and enriches the ethical imagination. (shrink)

In 1785, George Washington described a “knowing farmer” as “one who can convert every thing he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards Gold.” With these words, Washington linked the “knowing farmer” to the alchemist who endeavored to transform base metals into gold with the aid of a philosopher's stone. In each instance, the challenge was to convert raw materials into something new and precious.Today, the “knowing bioethicist” is in a similar position. American bioethics harbors a variety of ethical (...) methods that emphasize different ethical factors, including principles, circumstances, character, interpersonal needs, and personal meaning. Each method reflects an important aspect of ethical experience, adds to the others, and enriches the ethical imagination. (shrink)

Is there a special Mediterranean approach to Bioethics and if so what are the roots of this approach? And why not a Bosphorus, or a ‘lake Michigan’ bioethics? The answer to such a question depends on the focus one takes on defining ‘Mediterranean’? On the one hand one can refer to the Mediterranean region which includes the surrounding coasts, having Europe on its northern coast line, northern Africa on its southern coast line (and these will include the north and South (...) West coasts), and in the Eastern region countries which border with Middle-Eastern countries. This approach is the approach currently being taken by European Parliamentarians when they speak about the Mediterranean, namely including countries like France, Italy and Libya. On the other hand there is the look upon the Mediterranean as ‘Southern Europe’; this is a more ‘traditional’ way on how westerners view the Mediterranean. This common approach is often recognized when, for example, we speak of ‘Mediterranean diet’, or, ‘Mediterranean Temperament’. It would include Eastern countries like Greece and Cyprus. This article focuses on these two approaches to Mediterranean ethics after discussing issues pertaining to the region which are important to define in this context. It then analyses the need for having a Mediterranean approach to bioethical issues. (shrink)

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the place of the ethics of virtues and char acter in nursing and health care in general, and in psychiatric nursing in particular. To attain this goal, the relationship between the ethics of duty (i.e. rule based ethics) and the ethics of virtue and character will be clarified in order to defend our main hypothe sis that these two types of ethics should complement each other, since both are necessary but neither (...) by itself is sufficient for nursing. This means that any applied ethics, as in nursing, should consider the importance of the agent's moral character. To support our arguments, we shall use cases from the empirical reality of psychiatric and mental health care. (shrink)

When health professionals experience moral distress during routine clinical practice, they are challenged to maintain integrity through conscientious practice guided by ethical principles and virtues that promote the dignity of all human beings who need care. Their integrity also needs preservation during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when faced with triage protocols that allocate scarce resources. Although a crisis may change our ability to provide life-saving treatment to all who need it, a crisis should not change the ethical (...) values that should always be guiding clinical care. Enduring ethical commitments should encourage clinicians to base treatment decisions on the medical needs of individual patients. This approach contrasts with utilitarian attempts to maximize selected aggregate outcomes by using scoring systems that use short-term and possibly long-term prognostic estimates to discriminate between patients and thereby treat them unequally in terms of their eligibility for life-sustaining treatment. During times of crisis and calm, moral communication allows clinicians to exercise moral agency and advocate for their individual patients, thereby demonstrating conscientious practice and resisting influences that may contribute to compartmentalization, moral injury, and burnout. (shrink)

The article by Doernberg and Truog (2023) suggests that five different medical spheres have five distinctive sets of moral norms based on the ends of those spheres, implying that different roles in...

How health care providers are paid affects how medicine is practiced. It is thus important to assess provider payment models not only from the economic perspective but also from the ethical perspective. China recently started to reform the provider payment model in the health care system from fee-for-service to case-based payment. This paper aims to examine this transition from an ethical perspective. We collected empirical studies on the impact of case-based payment in the Chinese health care system and applied a (...) systematic ethical matrix that integrates clinical ethics and public health ethics to analyze the empirical findings. We identified eleven prominent ethical issues related to case-based payment. Some ethical problems of case-based payment in China are comparable to ethical problems of managed care and diagnosis related groups in high-income countries. However, in this paper we discuss in greater detail four specific ethical issues in the Chinese context: professionalism, the patient-physician relationship, access to care and patient autonomy. Based on the analysis, we cautiously infer that case-based payment is currently more ethically acceptable than fee-for-service in the context of China, mainly because it seems to lower financial barriers to access care. Nonetheless, it will be difficult to justify the implementation of case-based payment if no additional measures are taken to monitor and minimize its existing negative ethical implications. (shrink)

In 2018, the remarkable rescue of twelve young boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand captured worldwide attention. The rescue required the boys to be dived out of the cave system while fully anaesthetized which presented unique practical and ethical challenges for the rescue team. Major departures from normal anaesthetic practice were required. Taking anaesthetized children underwater was unprecedented, complex, and dangerous. To do this underground in a flooded cave meant the risks were extreme. Using (...) a principlist approach, this essay will outline the rescue plan highlighting the ethical dilemmas faced by the rescue team. Informed consent and full disclosure of information are justifiably waived in emergency disaster scenarios. Beneficence as a guiding principle becomes a major challenge when all rescue options appear destined to cause likely fatalities of healthy young boys. Importantly, virtues and virtue ethics also have a vital role to play when confronting and dealing with ethical challenges in disaster scenarios—this will be discussed with particular reference to the cave rescue. (shrink)

Are there distinctly European values in bioethics, and if there are, what are they? Some Continental philosophers have argued that the principles of dignity, precaution, and solidarity reflect the European ethos better than the liberal concepts of autonomy, harm, and justice. These principles, so the argument goes, elevate prudence over hedonism, communality over individualism, and moral sense over pragmatism. Contrary to what their proponents often believe, however, dignity, precaution, and solidarity can be interpreted in many ways, and it is not (...) clear which reading would, or should, be favored by popular opinion. It is therefore dangerous to think that any one understanding of ``European'', or any other, values could be legitimately imposed on those who have different ideas about morality in health care and related fields. Bioethical principles should be employed to promote discussion, not to suppress it. (shrink)

Nursing ethics centres on how nurses ought to respond to the moral situations that arise in their professional contexts. Nursing ethicists invoke normative approaches from moral philosophy. Specifically, it is increasingly common for nursing ethicists to apply virtue ethics to moral problems encountered by nurses. The point of this article is to argue for scepticism about this approach. First, the research question is motivated by showing that requirements on nurses such as to be kind, do not suffice to establish virtue (...) ethics in nursing because normative rivals (such as utilitarians) can say as much; and the teleology distinctive of virtue ethics does not transpose to a professional context, such as nursing. Next, scepticism is argued for by responding to various attempts to secure a role for virtue ethics in nursing. The upshot is that virtue ethics is best left where it belongs – in personal moral life, not professional ethics – and nursing ethics is best done by taking other approaches. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal I presented a sceptical argument about the current prominence of virtue ethics in nursing ethics. Daniel Putman has responded with a defence of the relevance of virtue in nursing. The present article continues this discussion by clarifying, defending, and expanding the sceptical argument. I start by emphasizing some features of the sceptical case, including assumptions about the nature of sceptical arguments, and about the character of both virtue ethics and nursing ethics. Then I (...) respond to objections of Putman's such as that, according to virtue ethics, virtue is relevant to the whole of a human life, including one's behaviour in a professional context; and that eudaimonia should be central in explaining and motivating a nurse's decision to enter the profession. Having argued that these objections are not compelling, I go on to discuss an interesting recent attempt to reassert the role of virtue ethics in the ethics of professions, including nursing. This centres on whether role‐specific obligations – e.g. the obligations that arise for a moral agent qua lawyer or mother – can be accommodated in a virtue ethics approach. Sean Cordell has argued that the difficulty of accommodating role‐specific obligations results in an ‘institution‐shaped gap’ in virtue ethics. He suggests a way of meeting this difficulty that appeals to the ergon of institutions. I endorse the negative point that role‐specific obligations elude virtue ethics, but argue that the appeal to the ergon of institutions is unsuccessful. The upshot is further support for scepticism about the virtue ethics approach to nursing ethics. I end by gesturing to some of the advantages of a sceptical view of virtue ethics in nursing ethics. (shrink)

The present essay discusses the relationship between moral philosophy, psychology and education based on virtue ethics, contemporary neuroscience, and how neuroscientific methods can contribute to studies of moral virtue and character. First, the present essay considers whether the mechanism of moral motivation and developmental model of virtue and character are well supported by neuroscientific evidence. Particularly, it examines whether the evidence provided by neuroscientific studies can support the core argument of virtue ethics, that is, motivational externalism. Second, it discusses how (...) experimental methods of neuroscience can be applied to studies in human morality. Particularly, the present essay examines how functional and structural neuroimaging methods can contribute to the development of the fields by reviewing the findings of recent social and developmental neuroimaging experiments. Meanwhile, the present essay also considers some limitations embedded in such discussions regarding the relationship between the fields and suggests directions for future studies to address these limitations. (shrink)

In the United States at present, the death penalty is a possible sentence in 31 out of 50 states, as well as within the military and for federal cases. In the U.S., numbers of executions are declin...

In our time there is growing interest in developing a systematic approach to oncologic patients and end-of-life care. An important goal within this domain is to identify the values and ethical norms that guide physicians’ decisions and their recourse to technological aids to preserve life. Though crucial, this objective is not easy to achieve.

“Public Trust in Expert Knowledge: Narrative, Ethics, and Engagement” examines the social, cultural, and ethical ramifications of changing public trust in the expert biomedical knowledge systems of emergent and complex global societies. This symposium was conceived as an interdisciplinary project, drawing on bioethics, the social sciences, and the medical humanities. We settled on public trust as a topic for our work together because its problematization cuts across our fields and substantive research interests. For us, trust is simultaneously a matter of (...) ethics, social relations, and the cultural organization of meaning. We share a commitment to narrative inquiry across our fields of expertise in the bioethics of transformative health technologies, public communications on health threats, and narrative medicine. The contributions to this symposium have applied, in different ways and with different effects, this interdisciplinary mode of inquiry, supplying new reflections on public trust, expertise, and biomedical knowledge. (shrink)

Professional medical ethics demands of health care professionals in addition to specific duties and rules of conduct that they embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired implied attitude of physicians. In a sequel of three articles, a set of three of these concepts is presented in an interpretation that is meant to characterise the morally emotional part of this attitude: “empathy”, “compassion” and “care”. In the first article of the (...) series, “empathy” has been developed as a mainly cognitive and morally neutral capacity of understanding. In this article, the emotional and virtuous core of the desired professional attitude—compassion—is elaborated. Compassion is distinguished from sympathy, empathy and pity. Several problems of compassion as a spontaneous, warm emotion for being a professional virtue are discussed: especially questions of over-demand, of justice and of concerns because of a possible threat to the patient’s dignity and autonomy. An interpretation of compassion as processed and learned professional attitude, that founds dignity on the general idea of man as a sentient being and on solidarity, not on his independence and capacities, is developed. It is meant to rule out the possible side effects and to make compassion as a professional attitude and as professional virtue attractive, teachable and acquirable. In order to reach the adequate warmth and closeness for the particular physician-patient-relation, professional compassion has to be combined with the capacity of empathy. If appropriate, the combination of both empathy and compassion as “empathic compassion” can demand a much warmer attitude towards the patient than each of the elements alone, or the simple addition of them can provide. The concept of “care” that will be discussed in a forthcoming article of this sequel is a missing necessary part to describe the active potential of the desired moral attitude of the physician more completely. The reconstruction of the desired professional attitude in terms of “empathic compassionate care” is certainly not the only possible description, but it is a detailed proposal in order to give an impulse for the discussion about the inner tacit values and the meaning of medicine and clinical healthcare professions. (shrink)

In professional medical ethics, the physician traditionally is obliged to fulfil specific duties as well as to embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired underlying attitude of physicians. In this article, one of them—empathy—is presented in an interpretation that is meant to depicture (together with the two additional concepts compassion and care) this attitude. Therefore empathy in the clinical context is defined as the adequate understanding of the inner processes (...) of the patient concerning his health-related problems. Adequacy is scrutinized on behalf of the emotional and subjective involvement of he physician, and on the necessary dependence on medical—moral—goals. In the present interpretation, empathy alone is no guarantee of the right moral attitude, but a necessary instrumental skill in order to perceive and treat a patient as an individual person. The concepts of compassion and care that will be discussed in two forthcoming articles are necessary parts to describe the desired moral attitude of the physician more completely. (shrink)

In professional medical ethics, the physician traditionally is obliged to fulfil specific duties as well as to embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired moral attitude of physicians. In a series of three articles, three of the discussed concepts are presented in an interpretation that is meant to characterise the morally emotional part of this attitude: “empathy”, “compassion” and “care”. In the first article of the series, “empathy” has been (...) developed as a mainly cognitive and morally neutral capacity of understanding. In the second article, the emotional and virtuous core of the desired professional attitude—compassion—has been presented. Compassion as a professional attitude has been distinguished from a spontaneous feeling of compassion, and has been related to a general idea of man as vulnerable and solidary being. Thus, the dignity of the patient is safeguarded in spite of the asymmetry of compassion. In this article, the third concept of the triad—“care”—is presented. Care is conceived as an attitude as well as an activity which can be directed to different objects: if it is directed to another sentient being, it is regarded as intrinsically morally valuable; implying (1) the acceptance of being addressed, (2) a benevolent inclination to help and to foster, and (3) activity to realize this. There are different forms of benevolence that can underlie caring. With regard to the professional physician’s ethos, the attitude of empathic compassion as developed in the two previous articles is proposed to be the adequate underlying attitude of care which demands the right balance between closeness and professionalism and the right form of attention to the person of the patient. ‘Empathic compassionate care’ does not, however, describe the whole of the desired attitude of a physician, but focuses on the morally-emotive aspects. In order to get also the cognitive and practical aspects of biomedicine into the picture, ‘empathic compassionate care’ has to be combined with an attitude of responsibility that is more directed to decision-making and outcome than a caring attitude alone can be. The reconstruction of the desired professional attitude in terms of “empathic compassionate care” and “responsibility” is certainly not the only possible description, but it is a detailed proposal in order to give an impulse for the discussion about the inner tacit values and the meaning of medicine and clinical healthcare professions. (shrink)

The concept of care can be explained in various ways, and it can present a different meaning to each person. Nurses are increasingly aware that good nursing care consists of ‘more’ than the competent performance of a number of caring activities. For many nurses it is less clear what this ‘more’ means and what importance it has in nursing. This article will develop a view concerning care considered as a moral attitude. It is argued that care can be considered as (...) a foundational normative concept in the ethics of the nursing profession. The aim is to clarify that nurses do not derive their specific caring identity just from the set of tasks that they perform but also from the way in which they commit themselves to the caring process. (shrink)

The United Nations Scientific, Education and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) expresses in its title and substance a controversial linkage of two normative systems: international human rights law and bioethics. The UDBHR has the status of what is known as a ‘non-binding’ declaration under public international law. The UDBHR’s normative foundation within bioethics (and association, for example, with virtue-based or principlist bioethical theories) is more problematic. Nonetheless, the UDBHR contains socially important principles of technology (...) transfer and transnational benefit (articles 14, 15 and 21). This paper is one of the first to explore how the disciplines of bioethics and international human rights law may interact in the UDBHR to advance the policy relevance and health impact of technology transfer and transnational benefit principles. It investigates their normative ancestry in the UDBHR, as well as relevant conceptual differences between bioethics and public international law in this respect and how these may be relevant to their conceptual evolution and application. (shrink)

Harmony is one of the most fundamental Japanese values. It is derived from Confucianism and encompasses a state of mind, an action process and outcomes of the action. This article draws on research data and discusses Japanese nurses’ perceptions of harmony as reflected in their everyday practice. The most important virtues for these nurses were reported as politeness and respect for other persons. The outcome from the nurses’ harmonious practice, it is claimed, benefited patients and created peaceful, harmonious relationships for (...) all. Because of the unique link between harmony and the location of interaction, the ideal ‘workplace harmony’ threatened some nurses’ professional decision making. These nurses confused harmony with conformity by superficial agreement. The Japanese seniority system could be a major factor contributing to this problem. Ethics education that includes traditional values and concepts in Japanese culture is strongly urged. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

The fundamental claim that the practice of medicine is essentially a moral enterprise remains highly contentious, not least among the dominant traditional moral theories. The medical profession itself is today characterized by multicultural pluralism and moral relativism that have left the Hippocratic moral tradition largely in disarray. In this paper, I attempt to clarify the ambiguity about practicing medicine as a moral enterprise and echo Pellegrino’s call for a phenomenologically and teleologically derived philosophy of medicine. I proffer a realistic trifocal (...) matrix in which the virtuous moral agency and the teleologically derived moral imperative of the physician are comprehensively integrated with an action-guiding practical analytical framework for the resolution of ethical dilemmas in medicine. I argue that this trifocal perspective points us towards an authentic philosophy of medicine that is not only verifiable through Lonerganian self-appropriation, but also authentically objective through the possible moral self-transcendence of the good physician. (shrink)

The history of nursing in the home: revealing the significance of place in the expression of moral agency The relationship between place and moral agency in home care nursing is explored in this paper. The notion of place is argued to have relevance to moral agency beyond moral context. This argument is theoretically located in feminist ethics and human geography and is supported through an examination of historical documents (1900–33) that describe the experiences and insights of American home care/private duty (...) nurses or that are related to nursing ethics. Specifically, the role of place in inhibiting and enhancing care, justice, good relationships, and power in the practice of private duty nurses is explored. Several implications for current nursing ethics come out of this analysis. (i) The moral agency of nurses is highly nuanced. It is not only structured by nurses’ relationships to patients and health professionals, i.e. moral context, it is also structured by the place of nursing care. (ii) Place has the potential to limit and enhance the power of nurses. (iii) Some aspects of nursing's conception of the good, such as what constitutes a good nurse–patient relationship, are historically and geographically relative. (shrink)

Evidence exists that behavioral and social science researchers have been frustrated with regulations and institutional review boards (IRBs) from the 1970s through today. Making matters worse, many human participants protection instruction programs - now mandated by IRBs - offer inadequate reasons why researchers should comply with regulations and IRBs. Promoting compliance either for its own sake or to avoid penalties is contrary to the developmental aims of moral education and may be ineffective in fostering the responsible conduct of research. This (...) article explores the concept of professional virtue and argues that compliance is capable of becoming a professional virtue like scientific honesty. This requires, however, that regulatory and IRB demands contribute to human well-being and to the aims of research as a profession and that researchers, therefore, internalize the norms that underlie regulatory and IRB demands. This, in turn, requires a series of changes in the way society develops, promulgates, and enforces regulatory and IRB rules. The challenge is, simply put, to embed compliance into the world of living morality. (shrink)