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Health as a Virtue

Author: Melanie L Dobson

Publisher: Lutterworth Press

Published: 2015-02-26

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 0718843401

How are we to care for our bodies and our health as part of faithful Christian living? Melanie Dobson excavates from Thomas Aquinas an answer for how contemporary Christians might live well in the midst of a very sick culture. Through a close reading of Aquinas's 'Treatise on Habit', Dobson reveals that the moral practice of habit does indeed include health. Thomas's keen understanding of the human person and of human longings supports the book's argument for a practice of health that directs us deep into the heart of God. Field research with clergy and missionaries offers concrete examples of the implementation of habits of health as part of the life of Christian virtue. The stories from the Clergy Health Initiative and Word Made Flesh missionary organization exhibit transformations that ushered Christian leaders into deeper love of God, neighbor, and themselves. In the end, the theology of habits of health means that our quotidian care of our bodies is not only faithful, but directs us into a life of flourishing.

The Virtues in Medical Practice

Author: Edmund D. Pellegrino

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-11-11

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0199748756

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In recent years, virtue theories have enjoyed a renaissance of interest among general and medical ethicists. This book offers a virtue-based ethic for medicine, the health professions, and health care. Beginning with a historical account of the concept of virtue, the authors construct a theory of the place of the virtues in medical practice. Their theory is grounded in the nature and ends of medicine as a special kind of human activity. The concepts of virtue, the virtues, and the virtuous physician are examined along with the place of the virtues of trust, compassion, prudence, justice, courage, temperance, and effacement of self-interest in medicine. The authors discuss the relationship between and among principles, rules, virtues, and the philosophy of medicine. They also address the difference virtue-based ethics makes in confronting such practical problems as care of the poor, research with human subjects, and the conduct of the healing relationship. This book with the author's previous volumes, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice and For the Patient's Good, are part of their continuing project of developing a coherent moral philosophy of medicine.

From Morality to Mental Health

Author: Mike W. Martin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-04-20

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0195304713

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Surveying the ways in which morality and mental health are related, this book touches on practical concerns, such as love and work, crime and violence, and addictions. It aims to shows how morality and mental health are intertwined in our pursuit of a meaningful life.

Contemporary Bioethics

Author: Mohammed Ali Al-Bar

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-27

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3319184288

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This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-‘aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discussed. Whereas these natural sources are God’s special gifts to human beings, God’s revelation as given to the prophets is the supernatural source of divine guidance through which human communities have been guided at all times through history. The second part of the book concentrates on the objectives of Islamic religious practice – the maqa' sid – which include: Preservation of Faith, Preservation of Life, Preservation of Mind (intellect and reason), Preservation of Progeny (al-nasl) and Preservation of Property. Lastly, the third part of the book discusses selected topical issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction devices, genetics, organ transplantation, brain death and end-of-life aspects. For each topic, the current medical evidence is followed by a detailed discussion of the ethical issues involved.

The Virtuous Physician

Author: James A. Marcum

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-01-02

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9400727062

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Although modern medicine enjoys unprecedented success in providing excellent technical care, many patients are dissatisfied with the poor quality of care or the unprofessional manner in which physicians sometimes deliver it. Recently, this patient dissatisfaction has led to quality-of-care and professionalism crises in medicine. In this book, the author proposes a notion of virtuous physician to address these crises. He discusses the nature of the two crises and efforts by the medical profession to resolve them and then he briefly introduces the notion of virtuous physician and outlines its basic features. Further, virtue theory is discussed, along with virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, and specific virtues, especially as they relate to medicine. The author also explores the ontological priority of caring as the metaphysical virtue for grounding the notion of virtuous physician, and two essential ontic virtues—care and competence. In addition to this, he examines the transformation of competence into prudent wisdom and care into personal radical love to forge the compound virtue of prudent love, which is sufficient for defining the virtuous physician. Lastly, two clinical case stories are reconstructed which illustrate the various virtues associated with medical practice, and it is discussed how the notion of virtuous physician addresses the quality-of-care and professionalism crises.

Thieves of Virtue

Author: Tom Koch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-09-07

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0262304600

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An argument against the “lifeboat ethic” of contemporary bioethics that views medicine as a commodity rather than a tradition of care and caring. Bioethics emerged in the 1960s from a conviction that physicians and researchers needed the guidance of philosophers in handling the issues raised by technological advances in medicine. It blossomed as a response to the perceived doctor-knows-best paternalism of the traditional medical ethic and today plays a critical role in health policies and treatment decisions. Bioethics claimed to offer a set of generally applicable, universally accepted guidelines that would simplify complex situations. In Thieves of Virtue, Tom Koch contends that bioethics has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, he argues, bioethics has promoted a view of medicine as a commodity whose delivery is predicated not on care but on economic efficiency. At the heart of bioethics, Koch writes, is a “lifeboat ethic” that assumes “scarcity” of medical resources is a natural condition rather than the result of prior economic, political, and social choices. The idea of natural scarcity requiring ethical triage signaled a shift in ethical emphasis from patient care and the physician's responsibility for it to neoliberal accountancies and the promotion of research as the preeminent good. The solution to the failure of bioethics is not a new set of simplistic principles. Koch points the way to a transformed medical ethics that is humanist, responsible, and defensible.

The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice

Author: Edmund D. Pellegrino MD

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 1996-04-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9781589014305

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Christian health care professionals in our secular and pluralistic society often face uncertainty about the place religious faith holds in today's medical practice. Through an examination of a virtue-based ethics, this book proposes a theological view of medical ethics that helps the Christian physician reconcile faith, reason, and professional duty. Edmund D. Pellegrino and David C. Thomasma trace the history of virtue in moral thought, and they examine current debate about a virtue ethic's place in contemporary bioethics. Their proposal balances theological ethics, based on the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, with contemporary medical ethics, based on the principles of beneficence, justice, and autonomy. The result is a theory of clinical ethics that centers on the virtue of charity and is manifest in practical moral decisions. Using Christian bioethical principles, the authors address today's divisive issues in medicine. For health care providers and all those involved in the fields of ethics and religion, this volume shows how faith and reason can combine to create the best possible healing relationship between health care professional and patient.

The Harmony of the Soul

Author: Neal O. Weiner

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1993-12-07

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1438423586

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The Harmony of the Soul creates a naturalistic grounding for ethics and a moral grounding for psychotherapy. It is an original and startling synthesis of the ideas of mental health and moral virtue based on neglected affinities between classical Greek ethics, contemporary virtue ethics, sociobiology, and the basic presuppositions of psychotherapy. A central thesis of the book is that we can assume "the worst" about what science tells us about the human animal without having to sacrifice any of the things that are of most importance to ethics: virtue and the good life, harmony of the soul, freedom, conscience, and moral knowledge.

Ethics in Medicine

Author: Jennifer Jackson

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0745625681

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How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world.

Working Virtue

Author: Rebecca L. Walker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-01-04

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0199271658

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A collective study of virtue theory and contemporary moral problems, this work discusses topics in bioethics, professional ethics, ethics of the family, law, interpersonal ethics, and the emotions. It offers a variety of perspectives, including pluralistic, eudaimonistic, care-theoretical, Chinese, comparative and stoic.