The Virtuous Physician

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.

The Virtuous Physician: A Brief Medical History of Moral Inquiry from Hippocrates to COVID-19 traces the origin and development of practical moral inquiry as viewed through a lens of medical history. The cornerstone of the book is a translation of, and commentary on, the second century BC pseudo-Hippocratic Greek text, Precepts, a work not translated into English since 1921, which introduces the idea of the 'virtuous physician', and the 'art' of medicine. Precepts describes the ideal way of being of the physician, and a pragmatic, very modern code of ethics. Through the examination of other early texts the book locates the physician as a seminal figure in ancient society, first with religious significance, and later with increasingly philosophico-intellectual meaning, the physical embodiment of the search for moral-pragmatic professional standardization. This inquiry is put to the test as applied to the existential threat and crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new, updated translation of Precepts makes the book interesting to classicists; and the detailed discussion of the cross-cultural influences between East and West in the Ancient World, especially of the influence of the Ancient Near East on Greek and Roman thought, to historians. It provides an outline of the history of the field for bioethicists and biomedical ethicists, and a seminal reference piece for physicians, from which to ground their own daily decision-making. It can be seen as a more valuable guide than the Hippocratic Oath, in this regard.

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.

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 woith 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.

Interest in theories of virtue and the place of virtues in the moral life con tinues to grow. Nicolai Hartmann [7], George F. Thomas [20], G.E.M. Anscombe [1], and G.H. von Wright [21], for example, called to our atten tion decades ago that virtue had become a neglected topic in modem ethics. The challenge implicit in these sorts of reminders to rediscover the contribu tion that the notion of virtue can make to moral reasoning, moral character, and moral judgment has not gone unattended. Arthur Dyck [3], P.T. Geach [5], Josef Pieper (16], David Hamed [6], and, most notably, Stanley Hauerwas [8-11], in the theological community, have analyzed or utilized in their work virtue-based theories of morality. Philosophical probings have come from Lawrance Becker [2], Philippa Foot [4], Edmund Pincoffs [17], James Wallace [22], and most notably, Alasdair MacIntyre [12-14]. Draw ing upon and revising mainly ancient and medieval sources, these and other commentators have ignited what appears to be the beginning of a sustained examination of virtue.

The Virtuous Physician: A Brief Medical History of Moral Inquiry from Hippocrates to COVID-19 traces the origin and development of practical moral inquiry as viewed through a lens of medical history. The cornerstone of the book is a translation of, and commentary on, the second century BC pseudo-Hippocratic Greek text, Precepts, a work not translated into English since 1921, which introduces the idea of the ‘virtuous physician’, and the ‘art’ of medicine. Preceptsdescribes the ideal way of being of the physician, and a pragmatic, very modern code of ethics. Through the examination of other early texts the book locates the physician as a seminal figure in ancient society, first with religious significance, and later with increasingly philosophico-intellectual meaning, the physical embodiment of the search for moral-pragmatic professional standardization. This inquiry is put to the test as applied to the existential threat and crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new, updated translation of Precepts makes the book interesting to classicists; and the detailed discussion of the cross-cultural influences between East and West in the Ancient World, especially of the influence of the Ancient Near East on Greek and Roman thought, to historians. It provides an outline of the history of the field for bioethicists and biomedical ethicists, and a seminal reference piece for physicians, from which to ground their own daily decision-making. It can be seen as a more valuable guide than the Hippocratic Oath, in this regard.

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.