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Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders

Incivility among physicians, between physicians and learners, and between physicians and nurses or other healthcare professionals has become commonplace. If allowed to continue unchecked by academic leaders and medical educators, incivility can cause personal psychological injury and seriously damag...

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Autores principales: McCullough, Laurence B, Coverdale, John, Chervenak, Frank A
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10579492/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36889908
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme-2022-108735
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author McCullough, Laurence B
Coverdale, John
Chervenak, Frank A
author_facet McCullough, Laurence B
Coverdale, John
Chervenak, Frank A
author_sort McCullough, Laurence B
collection PubMed
description Incivility among physicians, between physicians and learners, and between physicians and nurses or other healthcare professionals has become commonplace. If allowed to continue unchecked by academic leaders and medical educators, incivility can cause personal psychological injury and seriously damage organisational culture. As such, incivility is a potent threat to professionalism. This paper uniquely draws on the history of professional ethics in medicine to provide a historically based, philosophical account of the professional virtue of civility. We use a two-step method of ethical reasoning, namely ethical analysis informed by pertinent prior work, followed by identifying the implications of clearly articulated ethical concepts, to meet these goals. The professional virtue of civility and the related concept of professional etiquette was first described by the English physician-ethicist Thomas Percival (1740–1804). Based on a historically informed philosophical account, we propose that the professional virtue of civility has cognitive, affective, behavioural and social components based on a commitment to excellence in scientific and clinical reasoning. Its practice prevents a dysfunctional organisational culture of incivility and sustains a civility-based organisational culture of professionalism. Medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model, promote and inculcate the professional virtue of civility as essential to an organisational culture of professionalism. Academic leaders should hold medical educators accountable for discharge of this indispensable professional responsibility.
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spelling pubmed-105794922023-10-18 Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders McCullough, Laurence B Coverdale, John Chervenak, Frank A J Med Ethics Feature Article Incivility among physicians, between physicians and learners, and between physicians and nurses or other healthcare professionals has become commonplace. If allowed to continue unchecked by academic leaders and medical educators, incivility can cause personal psychological injury and seriously damage organisational culture. As such, incivility is a potent threat to professionalism. This paper uniquely draws on the history of professional ethics in medicine to provide a historically based, philosophical account of the professional virtue of civility. We use a two-step method of ethical reasoning, namely ethical analysis informed by pertinent prior work, followed by identifying the implications of clearly articulated ethical concepts, to meet these goals. The professional virtue of civility and the related concept of professional etiquette was first described by the English physician-ethicist Thomas Percival (1740–1804). Based on a historically informed philosophical account, we propose that the professional virtue of civility has cognitive, affective, behavioural and social components based on a commitment to excellence in scientific and clinical reasoning. Its practice prevents a dysfunctional organisational culture of incivility and sustains a civility-based organisational culture of professionalism. Medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model, promote and inculcate the professional virtue of civility as essential to an organisational culture of professionalism. Academic leaders should hold medical educators accountable for discharge of this indispensable professional responsibility. BMJ Publishing Group 2023-10 2023-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10579492/ /pubmed/36889908 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme-2022-108735 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Feature Article
McCullough, Laurence B
Coverdale, John
Chervenak, Frank A
Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title_full Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title_fullStr Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title_full_unstemmed Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title_short Professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
title_sort professional virtue of civility and the responsibilities of medical educators and academic leaders
topic Feature Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10579492/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36889908
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme-2022-108735
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