10 Values in Medical Care

Here are three, obviously true, claims:

• No one is perfectly healthy all the time.
• Some of the time our ill health leads us to seek medical treatment.
• Occasionally something happens (a car accident, for instance) that leads to us receiving treatment without seeking it out, and maybe without even being aware we’re getting it.

In short, we all are, or might at some point be, medical patients, and sometimes even without any choice in the matter.

The word ‘patient’ originally comes from a Latin term that implies passivity, being acted upon, and so having to suffer or endure something. It is opposed to agency or power to act.

And that partly describes what being a medical patient is like: stuff gets done to us by doctors and other healthcare workers.

But even when we are medical patients, we are still people who have agency in our lives. This means that, even as we turn ourselves over to others who act upon us and give us medical treatment, we have expectations for how we will be treated, and we want and expect to have a say in what happens to us.

So, being a patient is, in most cases, something we partially do, not just a state we occupy in which things are done to us.

This idea of being a medical patient raises a whole host of interesting evaluative questions: as patients, how do we think we ought to be treated? What do we think good medical treatment looks like? What rights do we have as patients? Do we also have responsibilities as patients (to caregivers, ourselves, etc.)?

And from the other direction, if you are a healthcare provider, how ought you to treat your patients? What responsibilities do you have as a provider? Do you also have rights as a provider, for instance, to deny treatment in certain situations?

All of these come together in the overarching question: what is good medical care?

These are all issues and questions that, once raised, do not admit of short and easy answers. But, thinking about them will help us practice the concepts introduced so far, and let us see how values, including core values, are at work in this important part of our lives.

You’re now going to do two assignments. One is a discussion with your group about what you value as a patient. The other has you looking at the American Medical Association’s code of professional ethics to see what good care looks like from the perspective of physicians.