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Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine

The central role of the virtue of compassion in the shaping of the professional character of healthcare providers is a well-emphasized fact. On the other hand, the utmost obligation of physicians is to alleviate or eliminate human suffering. Traditionally, according to the Aristotelian understanding...

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Autor principal: Aramesh, Kiarash
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5747837/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29296257
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author Aramesh, Kiarash
author_facet Aramesh, Kiarash
author_sort Aramesh, Kiarash
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description The central role of the virtue of compassion in the shaping of the professional character of healthcare providers is a well-emphasized fact. On the other hand, the utmost obligation of physicians is to alleviate or eliminate human suffering. Traditionally, according to the Aristotelian understanding of virtues and virtue ethics, human virtues have been associated with masculinity. In recent decades, the founders of the ethics of care have introduced a set of virtues with feminine nature. This paper analyzes the notion of compassion as a common virtue between the traditional/masculine and care/feminine sets of virtues and shows that compassion is a reunion and merging point of both sets of human virtues. This role can be actualized through the development and promotion of compassion as an important part of the character of an ideal physician/healthcare provider. In addition, this paper argues that the notion of compassion can shed light on some important aspects of the contemporary debates on healthcare provider-patient relationship and medical futility. Despite the recent technological and scientific transformations in medicine, the interpersonal relationship between healthcare providers and patients still plays a vital role in pursuing the goals of healthcare. The virtue of compassion plays a central role in the establishment of a trust-based physician-patient relationship. This central role is discernible in the debate of medical futility in which making difficult decisions, depends largely on trust and rapport which are achievable by compassion in the physician and the recognition of this compassion by the patients and their surrogate decision makers.
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spelling pubmed-57478372018-01-02 Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine Aramesh, Kiarash J Med Ethics Hist Med Other The central role of the virtue of compassion in the shaping of the professional character of healthcare providers is a well-emphasized fact. On the other hand, the utmost obligation of physicians is to alleviate or eliminate human suffering. Traditionally, according to the Aristotelian understanding of virtues and virtue ethics, human virtues have been associated with masculinity. In recent decades, the founders of the ethics of care have introduced a set of virtues with feminine nature. This paper analyzes the notion of compassion as a common virtue between the traditional/masculine and care/feminine sets of virtues and shows that compassion is a reunion and merging point of both sets of human virtues. This role can be actualized through the development and promotion of compassion as an important part of the character of an ideal physician/healthcare provider. In addition, this paper argues that the notion of compassion can shed light on some important aspects of the contemporary debates on healthcare provider-patient relationship and medical futility. Despite the recent technological and scientific transformations in medicine, the interpersonal relationship between healthcare providers and patients still plays a vital role in pursuing the goals of healthcare. The virtue of compassion plays a central role in the establishment of a trust-based physician-patient relationship. This central role is discernible in the debate of medical futility in which making difficult decisions, depends largely on trust and rapport which are achievable by compassion in the physician and the recognition of this compassion by the patients and their surrogate decision makers. Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2017-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5747837/ /pubmed/29296257 Text en © 2017 Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Aramesh, Kiarash
Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title_full Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title_fullStr Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title_full_unstemmed Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title_short Compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
title_sort compassion as the reunion of feminine and masculine virtues in medicine
topic Other
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5747837/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29296257
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