Abstract
Ethics education within the health professions varies greatly, but two approaches are most common: some rely on discipline- or profession- specific resources, such as codes of ethics for particular sets of practitioners, while others turn to the well-trodden arena of bioethics. This chapter offers to the reader a distinct approach, one rooted in the concept of dignity, and argues that, by attending to dignity, there is the potential to widen the ethical horizons of health professions students. An approach to ethics education in the health professions which takes seriously the concept of dignity does four things: first, it attends to stories; second, it engages non-standard cases (cases less commonly discussed or at the margins of health ethics conversations); third, it engenders and openness to embracing analyses of complicated concepts; fourth, it attempts to unify broad ethical considerations across the health professions and, in so doing, serves as a potential focal point not only for ethics of particular health professions, but also for interprofessional ethics.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Of, relating to, or involving, knowledge.
- 2.
Serving as a typical example of something.
- 3.
Incarceration is a commonly discussed case, but in research ethics, not in ethics education in the health professions.
- 4.
Elsewhere, I describe this tension between merit and equality. I argue that accounts of dignity appeal to a concept with an inherent tension between an egalitarian notion that applies to all persons and a meritocratic notion that highlights the best activities of persons or the best versions of themselves.
References
Aristotle. [350 BCE] 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Library of Liberal Arts.
Bates, Josiah. 2020a, April 22. “COVID-19 Tests for Ohio Inmates Confirm High Infection Rates”. Time. Accessed 9 December 2021. https://time.com/5825030/ohio-mass-testing-prisons-coronavirus-outbreaks/.
Bates, Josiah. 2020b, April 6. “New York’s Rikers Island Jail Sees First Inmate Death From COVID-19”. Time. Accessed 9 December 9 2021. https://time.com/5816332/rikers-island-inmate-dies-coronavirus/.
Beauchamp, Tom, and James F. Childress. 2019. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Alleen. 2020. “Inside Rikers: An Account of the Virus-Stricken Jail From a Man Who Managed to Get Out”. The Intercept (blog). April 21. https://theintercept.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-rikers-island-jail-nyc/.
Evans, John Hyde. 2014. The History and Future of Bioethics: A Sociological View. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
George, Robert, and Patrick Lee. 2008. “The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity”. In Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics, edited by the President’s Council on Bioethics, 409–443. Washington: U.S. Independent Agencies and Commissions.
King, Martin Luther. [1963] 2021. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.”. African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania. Accessed 9 December 2021. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2007. After Virtue. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
Macklin, Ruth. 2003. “Dignity is a Useless Concept”. BMJ 7429: 1419–1420.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2008. “Human Dignity and Political Entitlements”. In Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics, edited by the President’s Council on Bioethics, 351–380. Washington: U.S. Independent Agencies and Commissions.
Ocen, Priscilla A. 2012. “Punishing Pregnancy: Race, Incarceration, and the Shackling of Pregnant Prisoners”. California Law Review 100: 74.
O’Hear, Michael M. 2012. “Not So Sweet: Questions Raised by Sixteen Years of the PLRA and AEDPA.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 24: 223–228.
Post, Linda Farber, and Jeffrey Blustein. 2015. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ransom, Jan. 2020, April 9. “Jailed on a Minor Parole Violation, He Caught the Virus and Died.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/nyregion/rikers-coronavirus-deaths-parolees.html.
Schmitt, Marie-José. 2008. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. https://rm.coe.int/16802f5eb7#:~:text=Reference%3A%20European%20Convention%20on%20Human%20Rights&text=No%20one%20shall%20be%20subjected,or%20degrading%20treatment%20or%20punishment.&text=1.,held%20in%20slavery%20or%20servitude.
Smith, Patrick T. 2019. “Moral Status and Care of Impaired Newborns: An African American Protestant Perspective”. In Religion and Ethics in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, edited by Patrick T. Smith, 184–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Snead, O Carter. 2007. “Assessing the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Implications for Human Dignity and the Respect for Human Life”. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 7: 53–72.
van Zyl Smit, Dirk. 2010. “Regulation of Prison Conditions”. Crime and Justice 39: 503–563.
United Nations. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
United Nations. 2015. The 17 Goals: Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 13 December 2021.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pilkington, B.C. (2022). Teaching Dignity in the Health Professions. In: Brown, M.E.L., Veen, M., Finn, G.M. (eds) Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1512-3_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1512-3_23
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-1511-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-1512-3
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)