Research article summary:

Imaginative ethics--bringing ethical praxis into sharper relief.

Abstract Extract:
The empirical basis for this article is three years of experience with ethical rounds at Uppsala University Hospital. Three standard approaches of ethical reasoning are examined as potential explanations of what actually occurs during the ethical rounds. ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2002 in Journal: Med Health Care Philos (Language : eng)

Full Pubmed Extract

This information was retrieved, real-time, on your behalf from the public area of the Pubmed website:

1. Med Health Care Philos. 2002 ;5(1):33-42

Imaginative ethics--bringing ethical praxis into sharper relief.

Hansson MG

Research Program Ethics in Biomedicine, Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. Mats.Hansson@bioethics.uu.se

The empirical basis for this article is three years of experience with ethical rounds at Uppsala University Hospital. Three standard approaches of ethical reasoning are examined as potential explanations of what actually occurs during the ethical rounds. For reasons given, these are not found to be satisfying explanations. An approach called "imaginative ethics", is suggested as a more satisfactory account of this kind of ethical reasoning. The participants in the ethical rounds seem to draw on a kind of moral competence based on personal life experience and professional competence and experience. By listening to other perspectives and other experiences related to one particular patient story, the participants imagine alternative horizons of moral experience and explore a multitude of values related to clinical practice that might be at stake. In his systematic treatment of aesthetics in the Critique of Judgement, Kant made use of an operation of thought that, if applied to ethics, will enable us to be more sensitive to the particulars of each moral situation. Based on this reading of Kant, an account of imaginative ethics is developed in order to bring the ethical praxis of doctors and nurses into sharper relief. The Hebraic and the Hellenic traditions of imagination are used in order to illuminate some of the experiences of ethical rounds. In conclusion, it is argued that imaginative ethics and principle-based ethics should be seen as complementary in order to endow a moral discourse with ethical authority. Kantian ethics will do the job if it is remembered that Kant suggested only a modest, negative role of principle-based deliberation.

PMID : 11954992 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

This information is obtained from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright. Type "NLM copyright" into Google for more information.

Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
Mats G	Hansson	MG

Affiliation: Research Program Ethics in Biomedicine, Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. Mats.Hansson@bioethics.uu.se

3rd Party provider links

Click the links below to go to related 3rd party information:

MESH categories and related page links

This article was linked to the MESH categories shown on the left below. The links on the right are related Memletics pages.

Category links from this article:

Ethical Analysis - methods
Ethical Theory
Ethics, Clinical
Humans
Imagination
Principle-Based Ethics

Links for this article

For links to places where you can get the full text of this article see links. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text.

New! Using similar technology to this site, we have launched find-health-articles.com, targeting over 1 million health research article abstracts.

Here are some articles related to this one (by title keywords):

Medical decision-making: an argument for narrative and metaphor.

Ethics in the ICU.

Ethics and dementia: mapping the literature by bibliometric analysis.

Suffering: toward a contextual praxis.

A sex difference in reliance on vision during manual sequencing tasks.

Ethics and praxis: alternative strategies to physical restraint and seclusion in a psychiatric setting.

Ethical theories and dilemmas.

Establishing an ethical climate in support of research integrity: efforts and activities of the American Sociological Association.

The decision making process including assessment of ethical principles in the commitment of police-referred, psychiatric patients.

Curriculum evaluation of ethical reasoning and professional responsibility.

>>> Get more research article abstracts like these, or browse abstracts.

Keywords in this article:

account, actually, aesthetics, alternative, applied, approaches, argued, article, authority, based, basis, bring, called, clinical, competence, complementary, conclusion, critique, developed, discourse, doctors, draw, empirical, enable, endow, ethical, ethics, examined, experience, experiences, explanations, explore, given, hebraic, hellenic, his, horizons, hospital, illuminate, imagination, imaginative, imagine, job, judgement, kant, kantian, kind, life, listening, modest, moral, more, multitude, negative, not, nurses, occurs, one, only, operation, order, other, participants, particular, particulars, patient, personal, perspectives, potential, practice, praxis, principle, professional, reading, reasoning, reasons, related, relief, remembered, role, rounds, satisfactory, satisfying, sensitive, sharper, situation, stake, standard, story, suggested, systematic, thought, three, traditions, treatment, university, uppsala, us, values, will, years

Also, see our new free speed reading online course (beta version)