Cultivating Moral Character And Virtue In Professional Practice

Cultivating Moral Character and Virtue in Professional Practice is a pioneering collection of essays focused on the place of character and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personal moral character. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation or development of such moral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness. Featuring contributions from distinguished leaders in the application of virtue ethics to professional practice, such as Sarah Banks, Ann Gallagher, Geoffrey Moore, Justin Oakley and Nancy Sherman, the volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promoting moral character and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. The professional concerns of this work are of global significance and the book will be valuable reading for all working in contemporary professional practices. It will be of particular interest to academics, practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, social work, business and commerce and military service.

Professionals, it is said, have no use for simple lists of virtues and vices. The complexities and constraints of professional roles create peculiar moral demands on the people who occupy them, and traits that are vices in ordinary life are praised as virtues in the context of professional roles. Should this disturb us, or is it naive to presume that things should be otherwise? Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking develop a rigorous articulation and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like.

Virtue, Narrative, and Self connects two philosophical areas of study that have long been treated as distinct: virtue theory and narrative accounts of personal identity. Chapters address several important issues and neglected themes at the intersection of these research areas. Specific examples include the role of narrative in the identification, differentiation, and cultivation of virtue, the nature of practical reasoning and moral competence, and the influence of life’s narrative structure on our conceptions of what it means to live and act well. This volume demonstrates how recent work from the philosophy of mind and action concerning narrativity and our understanding of the self can shed new light on questions about the nature of virtue, practical wisdom, and human flourishing. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in virtue theory, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind and action, and moral education.

Practice Wisdom: Values and Interpretations brings diverse views and interpretations to an exploration of what wisdom in professional practice means and can become: academically, practically and inspirationally.

Psychotherapy is an indispensable approach in the treatment of mental disorders and, for some mental disorders, it is the most effective treatment. Yet, psychotherapy is abound with ethical issues. In psychotherapy ethics, numerous fundamental ethical issues converge, including self-determination/autonomy, decision-making capacity and freedom of choice, coercion and constraint, medical paternalism, the fine line between healthiness and illness, insight into illness and need of therapy, dignity, under- and overtreatment, and much more. The Oxford Handbook of Psychotherapy Ethics explores a whole range of ethical issues in the heterogenous field of psychotherapy thereby closing a widespread perceived gap between ethical sensitivity, technical language, and knowledge among psychotherapists. The book is intended not only for a clinical audience, but also for a philosophical/ethical audience - linking the two disciplines by fostering a productive dialogue between them, thereby enriching both the psychotherapeutic encounter and the ethical analysis and sensitivity in and outside the clinic. An essential book for psychotherapists in clinical practice, it will also be valuable for those professionals providing mental health services beyond psychology and medicine, including counsellors, social workers, nurses, and ministers.

Philosophy offers a means of unpacking and grappling with important questions and issues relevant to nursing practice, research, scholarship, and education. By engaging in these discussions, this Handbook provides a gateway to new understandings of nursing. The Handbook, which is split loosely into seven sections, begins with a foundational chapter exploring philosophy’s relationship to and with nursing and nursing theory. Subsequent sections thereafter examine a wide range of philosophic issues relevant to nursing knowledge and activity. Philosophy and nursing, philosophy and science, nursing theory Nursing’s ethical dimension is described Philosophic questions concerning patient care are investigated Socio-contextual and political concerns relevant to nursing are unpacked Contributors tackle difficult questions confronting nursing Difficulties around speech, courage, and race/otherness are discussed Philosophic questions pertaining to scholarship, research, and technology are addressed International in scope, this volume provides a vital reference for all those interested in thinking about nursing, whether students, practitioners, researchers, or educators.

This Open Access volume provides in-depth analysis of the wide range of ethical issues associated with drug-resistant infectious diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely recognized to be one of the greatest threats to global public health in coming decades; and it has thus become a major topic of discussion among leading bioethicists and scholars from related disciplines including economics, epidemiology, law, and political theory. Topics covered in this volume include responsible use of antimicrobials; control of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections; privacy and data collection; antibiotic use in childhood and at the end of life; agricultural and veterinary sources of resistance; resistant HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria; mandatory treatment; and trade-offs between current and future generations. As the first book focused on ethical issues associated with drug resistance, it makes a timely contribution to debates regarding practice and policy that are of crucial importance to global public health in the 21st century.

Ethics and the Good Nurse draws on internationally leading empirical research conducted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues and explores nursing as a virtuous profession through a close examination of nurses’ character. With the belief that virtues such as kindness, integrity, compassion and honesty are core to the nursing profession, this book draws on extended insights from the Jubilee Centre’s Virtuous Practicing in Nursing study to understand the role of such virtues in the professional practice and education of nurses. This book brings together knowledge from academics, scholars and practitioners to address the influence of personal and professional character on nurses and nursing. By including clear implications for policy, practice and research, Ethics and the Good Nurse serves as essential reading for a wide audience, including nurses, policy makers and nursing organisations and provides a timely and much-needed contribution to the field of nursing and character education.