Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:11:54.287Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Physicians' Duty of Compassion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Charles J. Dougherty  and
Ruth Purtilo
Charles J. Dougherty
Affiliation:
Director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska.
Ruth Purtilo
Affiliation:
Professor of Clinical Ethics, Center for Health Policy and Ethics, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This is a time of change in American healthcare. Market forces are restructuring local delivery systems around competing managed care networks. Many leading proposals for healthcare reform intend a reshaping of the national healthcare marketplace itself. Periods of change create an opportunity to reassess traditional values and practices. Such reassessments can be used to help insure that current innovations and proposed reforms preserve and strengthen the best in the traditions of medicine. A legitimate focus of concern in the medical and medical ethics community has been the effect of these delivery system changes on the physician-patient relationship. For example, will the future American healthcare system support and encourage compassion by physicians? Suppose it does not. Would something of significant moral value have been lost? More pointedly, would a system that undervalued or frustrated physician compassion be incompatible with the moral obligations of physicians? In order to address these questions, we examine the meaning of compassion and the role it should play in the physician-patient relationship. We argue that compassion is a duty of all physicians. Because this is so, we believe that changes in the healthcare system must be judged, in part, by how well they protect and encourage compassionate conduct by physicians.

Type
Special Section: Compassion: What Does It Really Mean?
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , Fall 1995 , pp. 426 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Dougherty, CJ. Ethical values at stake in health care reform. Jama 1992;268:2409–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

2. Emmanuel, E, Brett, A. Managed competition and the patient-physician relationship. New England Journal of Medicine 1993;329:879–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBresnahan, J. Compassionate response to human suffering: a neglected issue in health care reform. Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 1993;Fall:23–30.Google Scholar

3. American Medical Association. Principles of Medical Ethics. Chicago, Illinois: AMA, 1981.Google Scholar

4. Glick, SM. The component elements of physician compassion. Pharos 1985;Winter:9–14.Google Scholar

5. Pence, GE. Can compassion be taught? Journal of Medical Ethics 1983;9:189–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

6. Verhey, A. Compassion: beyond the standard account. Second Opinion 1992;18:99–102.Google ScholarPubMed

7. Beecher, H. Ethics and clinical research. New England Journal of Medicine 1966;274:1354–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

8. Barber, B. Compassion in medicine: towards new definitions and new institutions. New England Journal of Medicine 1976;295:939–43.Google Scholar

9. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971:489.Google Scholar

10. Schopenhauer, A. The Basis of Morality, [Trans EF Payne] Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965:144.Google Scholar

11. Kosinski, J. The Painted Bird. New York: Bantam Books, 1976.Google Scholar

12. Purtilo, R. Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions, 2nd ed.Philadelphia: WB Saunders Company 1993:80–90.Google Scholar

13. Reich, W. Speaking of suffering: a moral account of compassion. Soundings 1989;72:83–108.Google ScholarPubMed

14. Lester, GW, Smith, SG. Listening and talking to patients: a remedy for malpractice suits? Western Journal of Medicine 1993;158:268–72.Google ScholarPubMedShapiro, RS, Simpson, DE, Lawrence, SL, Talsky, AM, Sobocinski, KA, Schiendermayer, MD. A survey of sued and nonsued physicians and suing patients. Archives of Internal Medicine 1989;149:2190–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

15. Orentlicher, D. Denying treatment to the noncompliant patient. JAMA 1991;265:1579–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedGroves, J. Taking care of the hateful patient. New England Journal of Medicine 1978;298:883–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

16. Creagan, ET. Stress among medical oncologists: the phenomenon of burnout and a call to action. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 1993;68:614–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchiedermayer, DL, Tesch, BJ. Primary care physician burnout: definitions, self-assessment and treatment. Wisconsin Medical Journal 1992;91:179–80.Google ScholarPubMed