The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Virtue Ethics of Care for Healthcare Practitioners

Tong, Rosemarie

doi:10.1076/jmep.23.2.131.8921

Cited by 123 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…Considering the long history of nursing as a task devoted particularly to women, such virtue lists may, however, be problematic. Several of the suggested character traits for nurses, such as patience, empathy, concern, flexibility, and humbleness, are traits that are traditionally tied to the cultural construction of femininity (Tong, 1998).…”

Section: The Virtue Ethics Alternativementioning

confidence: 99%

Being, Doing, and Knowing: Developing Ethical Competence in Health Care

2007

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There is a growing interest in ethical competence-building within nursing and health care practising. This tendency is accompanied by a remarkable growth of ethical guidelines. Ethical demands have also been laid down in laws. Present-day practitioners and researchers in health care are thereby left in a virtual cross-fire of various legislations, codes, and recommendations, all intended to guide behaviour. The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of ethical guidelines in the process of ethical competence-building within health care practice and medical research. A conceptual and critical philosophical analysis of some paragraphs of the Helsinki Declaration and of relevant literature was performed. Three major problems related to ethical guidelines were identified, namely, the interpretation problem (there is always a gap between the rule and the practice, which implies that ethical competence is needed for those who are to implement the guidelines); the multiplicity problem (the great number of codes, declarations, and laws might pull in different directions, which may confuse the health care providers who are to follow them); and the legalisation problem (ethics concerns may take on a legal form, where ethical reflection is replaced by a procedure of legal interpretations). Virtue ethics might be an alternative to a rule based approach. This position, however, can turn ethics into a tacit knowledge, leading to poorly reflected and inconsistent ethical decisions. Ethical competence must consist of both being (virtues) and doing (rules and principles), but also of knowing (critical reflection), and therefore a communicative based model is suggested.

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Section: The Virtue Ethics Alternativementioning

confidence: 99%

Being, Doing, and Knowing: Developing Ethical Competence in Health Care

2007

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“…In recent time, theories that relate health care professional roles to virtue ethics have been presented [31,35]. Likewise, it has been suggested that one virtue nursing practice can develop is the virtue of care [2,41]. In an empirical investigation, Smith and Godfrey [39] examined nurses' perceptions of what it means to be a 'good' nurse.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Ethical Dilemmas and Ethical Competence in the Daily Work of Research Nurses

2009

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In spite of the growing interest in nursing ethics, few studies have focused on ethical dilemmas experienced by nurses working with clinical studies as 'research nurses'. The aim of the present study was to describe and explore ethical dilemmas that Swedish research nurses experience in their day-to-day work. In a qualitative study a purposeful sample of six research nurses from five wards of differing disciplines in four Swedish hospitals was interviewed. The analysis displayed several examples of ethical dilemmas, primarily tensions between the nurses' obligations to the study and to the patients involved. A guiding moral principle for the nurses was patient-centeredness, where the interest of research must not override the interest of the patient. In situations where tensions between research and patient interests occurred, and doctors and nurses disagreed upon the judgement, the nurses sometimes chose to follow the doctors' advice, and thus acted against their own moral judgment. Such situations seemed to create feelings of moral distress among the nurses. They described their profession as being 'invisible' and as lacking opportunities for ethical competence building. The conclusion is that research nurses frequently experience severe and difficult ethical dilemmas in their daily work. They need to be acknowledged as a particular profession in the health care organisation and encouraged to develop their specific ethical competence.

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“…For example within feminist critiques, some have highlighted how principlism reflects the oppression and subordination of women within certain social systems 24 while others have focused instead on promoting alternative moral frameworks to those loaded with masculine values, such as care ethics. 25 While such approaches are imperative, their narrow focus negates the exploration of global power relations which, to a large extent, dictate the way forward in an infinite number of ways in numerous less powerful, non-Western countries.…”

Section: The Salient Concept Of Personhood In Bioethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘redefinition of death’ debate: Western concepts and western bioethics

Jones

Kessel

2001

SCI ENG ETHICS

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Biomedicine is a global enterprise constructed upon the belief in the universality of scientific truths. However, despite huge scientific advances over recent decades it has not been able to formulate a specific and universal definition of death: In fact, in its attempt to redefine death, the concept of death appears to have become immersed in ever increasing vagueness and ambiguity. Even more worrisome is that bioethics, in the form of principlism, is also endeavouring to become a global enterprise by claiming neutrality. It appears that the discourse within both disciplines have similarly manipulated the boundaries of death to include the "dying". This paper argues that the redefinition of death debate in biomedicine reveals a concept of personhood which is profoundly western in origin and which is in accordance to the concept adhered to within principlism. Biomedicine and bioethics do not appear to acknowledge the limitations of their own world view and hence lack an understanding of their applicability and appropriateness in diverse social and cultural contexts; a situation which adds credence to claims as to the hegemonic and imperialistic nature of all such global enterprises.

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The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Virtue Ethics of Care for Healthcare Practitioners

Cited by 123 publications

References 0 publications

Being, Doing, and Knowing: Developing Ethical Competence in Health Care

Being, Doing, and Knowing: Developing Ethical Competence in Health Care

Ethical Dilemmas and Ethical Competence in the Daily Work of Research Nurses

The ‘redefinition of death’ debate: Western concepts and western bioethics

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