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Telling the Truth to Patients: A Clinical Ethics Exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

David C. Thomasma
David C. Thomasma
Affiliation:
Medical Ethics and Director of the Medical Humanities Program at Loyola University Chicago Medical Center and the Director of the International Bioethics Institute
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Extract

In this essay I will examine why the truth is so important to human communication in general, the types of truth, and why truth is only a relative value. After those introductory points, I will sketch the ways in which the truth is overridden or trumped by other concerns in the clinical setting. I will then discuss cases that fall into five distinct categories. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of truth telling and its primacy among secondary goods in the healthcare professional-patient relationship.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , Summer 1994 , pp. 375 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes

1. Pellegrino, ED, Thomasma, DC. For the Patient's Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar

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11. This was the driving assumption of Robert Maynard Hutchins during his tenure as President of the University of Chicago. During that time he and a circle of scholars tried to implement an innovative humanities-oriented curriculum at the University of Chicago that stressed ideas over facts, thinking over researching, the historical probity of Western civilization over the fractious scientific meandering of the present day. Ashmore, HS. Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins. New York: Little, Brown, 1989.Google Scholar