Register for email alerts and news feeds:
This journal | BMJ Group
rss
Journal of Medical Ethics 2008;34:458-462; doi:10.1136/jme.2007.022038
Copyright © 2008 by the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & Institute of Medical Ethics.

Ethics

Caring for risky patients: duty or virtue?

Correspondence to:
Tom Tomlinson, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, Michigan State University, C208 E Fee, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; tomlins4{at}msu.edu

ABSTRACT

The emergence several years ago of SARS, with its high rate of infection and death among healthcare workers, resurrected a recurring ethical question: do health professionals have a duty to provide care to patients with deadly infectious diseases, even at some substantial risk to themselves and their families? The conventional answer, repeated on the heels of the SARS epidemic, is that they do. In this paper, I argue that the arguments in support of such a duty are wanting in significant respects, and that the language of duty is simply not adequate to an understanding of all the moral dimensions of professional responses to the care of risky patients. Instead, we should speak the language of virtues and ideals if we want to do justice to the complexity of such harrowing circumstances.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Holt, G., Nunn, T., Gregori, A. (2008). Ethical Dilemmas in Orthopaedic Surgical Training. JBJS 90: 2798-2803 [Full Text]  

This Article

Services
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with

Register for free content

The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.