Article Text
Abstract
It is often claimed that medical professionals are subject to conflicting duties in their role morality. Some hold that the overridden duty taints the professional and generates a patient claim to a form of moral compensation. This paper challenges such a ‘compensation view’ of conflict and argues that it misleadingly makes the role morality into a personal contract between professional and patient. Two competing views are therefore considered. The ‘unity view’ argues that there are no real conflicts between professional duties. Hence, there can be no residual duties that are impossible to discharge and no special claim on the part of the patient. It is argued that this fails because the institutional nature of the role morality requires us to accept possibility of conflict. The paper articulates and defends a third view, where conflict triggers a professional duty of restitution. This duty is not a matter of making amends for a previous wrong, but rather a matter of rebuilding a trusting relationship that has been damaged due to blameless circumstances.
- philosophical ethics
- moral status
- health personnel
- codes of/position statements on professional ethics
- philosophy of medicine
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Rescuing the duty to rescue
- Respect for autonomy: deciding what is good for oneself
- Healthcare professionals ’ responsibility for informing relatives at risk of hereditary disease
- Advance decisions in dementia: when the past conflicts with the present
- Is risk stratification ever the same as ‘ profiling ’
- Clarifying and defending the endorsed life approach to surrogate decision - making
- The ethics of policy writing: how should hospitals deal with moral disagreement about controversial medical practices
- Duty to provide care to Ebola patients: the perspectives of Guinean lay people and healthcare providers
- Duties to rescue: individual, professional and institutional
- Why not common morality