Teaching Dignity in the Health Professions

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.