1st Edition

Caring About Health

By Stan van Hooft Copyright 2006
    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    Presenting a philosophical exploration of the ideas central to health care practice this book explores such concepts as caring, health, disease, suffering and pain from a phenomenological perspective. With deep philosophical insight this book draws out, not only the ethical demands that arise when one encounters these phenomena, but also the forms of ethical education that would help health care workers respond to those demands. This is a book which explores the grounds for ethical living rather than enunciating ethical principles. Van Hooft argues that ethical responses arise from sensitive and insightful awareness of what is salient in clinical and other health care settings. This book draws upon thinkers from the classical canon, the Anglo-American tradition and from continental philosophical ideas.

    Contents: Preface; Part 1 Health Care, Virtue and Education: Caring and professional commitment; Moral education for nursing decisions; Bioethics and caring; Towards a theory of caring; Acting from the virtue of caring; Socratic dialogue and the virtuous clinician. Part 2 The Objects of Health Care: The body and well-being; Health and subjectivity; Disease and subjectivity; Suffering and the goals of medicine; Pain and communication; The meanings of suffering. Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Stan van Hooft