Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
J Eval Clin Pract. 2011 Oct;17(5):948-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2011.01730.x. Epub 2011 Aug 4.
RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To examine the nature, scope and significance of virtues in the biographies of medical practitioners and to determine what kind of virtues are at play in their ethical behaviour and reflection.
A case study involving 19 medical practitioners associated with the Sydney Medical School, using semi-structured narrative interviews. Narrative data were analysed using dialectical empiricism, constant comparison and iterative reformulation of research questions.
Participants represented virtuous acts as centrally important in their moral assessments of both themselves and others. Acts appeared to be contextually virtuous, rather than expressions of stable character traits, and virtue was linked to acts that served to protect or enhance fundamental values attached to ontological security and human flourishing. Virtue ethics, in this sense, was the single most important ethical system for each of the participants.
Virtue ethics, construed as the appraisal of acts in contexts of risk, danger or threat to foundational values, emerged as the 'natural' ethical approach for medical practitioners in this case study. Teaching medical ethics to students and graduates alike needs to accommodate the priority attached to virtuous acts.
背景、目的和目标：研究医学从业者传记中的美德的性质、范围和意义，并确定在他们的道德行为和反思中起作用的是哪种美德。
采用与悉尼医学院有关的 19 名医学从业者的案例研究，使用半结构化叙述性访谈。使用辩证经验主义、恒比比较和研究问题的迭代重新表述对叙事数据进行分析。
参与者将有道德的行为视为他们对自己和他人的道德评估的核心重要性。行为似乎是在具体情况下具有道德性，而不是稳定性格特征的表现，而美德与那些有助于保护或增强与本体论安全和人类繁荣相关的基本价值观的行为有关。从这个意义上说，美德伦理学是每个参与者最重要的单一伦理体系。
对于本案例研究中的医学从业者来说，美德伦理学可以被理解为在对基本价值观构成风险、危险或威胁的情况下对行为的评价，它是一种“自然”的伦理方法。向学生和毕业生教授医学伦理学需要考虑到对有道德的行为的重视。
