Ethics Governance
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| Article - Abstract. To view full article click on the article title. | |
CBHD: The Need for Compassionate Strangers - Patricia Benner The care ethic given to us in the Christian tradition has been marginalized in the current market model of health care systems. Market arrangements are developed for autonomous strangers or customers to meet and buy goods and services. The market model overlooks the many ways we are not prepared to be astute and assertive consumers when we are most in need of health care---in times of vulnerability and danger. The story of the Good Samaritan suggests that the starting point in health care ethics should be in recognition and in relationship to the universal human reality of vulnerability and suffering. Moral worth and respect is to be accorded to all fellow human beings. Therefore, we are to be compassionate strangers to those who fall outside our own communities and kinships. Suffering and vulnerability are the common fates of finite embodied human beings. We each might need a fellow human being to respond with compassion to our needs for protection and comfort. Nursing practice has a lively tradition of caring for, and meeting, the other in suffering and vulnerability. But this tradition is increasingly challenged, particularly in the U.S., by managed care. Contracts between third party payers and employers have created new styles of commodification. The market has become the central integrative mechanism for health care--fostering a system of money changers in a not so holy temple. Full Article: http://www.cbhd.org/resources/healthcare/benner_1998-04-10.htm |
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2006 Ethics-Governance.com |
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