Using curiosity to render the invisible, visible.
Theor Med Bioeth
; 45(4): 251-259, 2024 Aug.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38767830
ABSTRACT
Virtues commonly associated with physicians and other healthcare professionals include empathy, respect, kindness, compassion, trustworthiness, and many more. Building upon the work of Bortolloti, Murphy-Hollies, and others, I suggest that curiosity as a virtue has an integral role to play in healthcare, namely, in helping to make those who are invisible, visible. Practicing the virtue of curiosity enables one to engage with and explore the experiences of patients and contributes toward building a physician-patient relationship of trust. As the perspectives and experiences of patients can be too often dismissed or lost within medical settings, curiosity can allow physicians to deeply know their patients, and thus provide better care. However, caution must be exercised so as to not to venture into inappropriate curiosity, where questions are asked for improper reasons or to help satisfy the personal interest of physicians. Finally, I sketch out two cases-on chronic pain and on vaccine hesitancy-to illustrate where curiosity can play a valuable role.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Physician-Patient Relations
/
Trust
/
Empathy
/
Exploratory Behavior
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Theor Med Bioeth
Journal subject:
ETICA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Country of publication: