The Moral Development of Health Care Professionals: Rational Decisionmaking in Health Care Ethics

A central challenge motivates this work: How, if at all, can philosophical ethics help in the moral development of health professionals? Bandman's three-part response is to argue, first, that there are justifiable answers to questions in health care ethics. To support this idea, he singles out a trilogy of related health care rights that are justifiably held by health consumers and for which health providers are responsible. These include rights to respect, to receive and to refuse treatment. These are vital to the principle of informed consent and to patient and provider autonomy. Secondly, the functioning of these health care rights depends on the ongoing cultivation and habitual practice of relevant virtues, such as dedicated and trained intelligence, practical wisdom, responsibility, caring and integrity. Thirdly, Bandman tries to show how health care ethics makes use of the dynamic interplay between signficant and relevant cases, historical and current, real and imaginary along with recognition of laws, customs, conventions and rules; together with philosophical theories of morality. An underlying theme of this book is the role of conditionals in health care ethics.

The aim of Bandman's work is to examine conditions and opportunities that promote the moral development of health professionals. Moral rights and virtues, comprising standards, can be taught and learned, known, understood and accepted. These standards comprise justifiable principles for effectively guiding the conduct of health professionals. Rights and virtues help differentiate right from wrong decisions in health care ethics; and thereby provide an appropriate basis for the moral development of health professionals.