Values and Virtues in Healthcare
Virtue ethics evaluates a person’s actions by considering what character traits or virtues are the most relevant to act on in their situation. It is distinctive in looking at the psychology of human decision-making, and at the moral motivations behind what people do – in other words, the ‘human factors’ which contribute to good and bad outcomes. These human factors can play a critical role in good and bad health outcomes for patients, and for the community. Virtue ethics enables us to probe these human factors in innovative and fruitful ways. However, virtue ethics is often seen as very individualistic, and as not always very evidence-based.
This research program understands virtues within broader institutional contexts. The research program has two core aims. First, to provide more empirically-informed accounts of healthcare professional virtues, and of how virtuous dispositions can succeed or fail. And second, to transform our understanding of how institutions and policymakers can enable and support virtuous behaviour by practitioners.
