Empathy: some thoughtful reflections among a favorable attitude

Honor Among Thieves: Some Reflections on Professional Codes of Ethics’

As complicated an affair as it may be to give a fully acceptable general characterization of professional codes of ethics that will capture every nuance, one theme that has attracted widespread attention portrays them as contrivances whose primary function is to secure certain obligations of professionals to clients, or to the external community.2 In contrast to such an “externalist” characteri...

Professional education: Some reflections

It was a courageous decision to found a journal in the early 1980’s; and it was nothing less than a leap of faith to name a journal: Education for Information. The times were not auspicious: people were becoming less certain as to what ‘Education’ was; and it was often said of ‘Information’ that it told one more about the user of the term than it did about its intended objective correlative. Li...

From Hippocrates to the Francis Report - Reflections on empathy

A year has now passed since the Francis Inquiry published its recommendations, after examining the causes of the failings in care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. A key message concerned the need to nurture a “common culture of caring, commitment and compassion”. This is not a new concept – in the fifth century BC, Hippocrates wrote to the effect that where there is love of humanity, ...

The desired moral attitude of the physician: (I) empathy.

In professional medical ethics, the physician traditionally is obliged to fulfil specific duties as well as to embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired underlying attitude of physicians. In this article, one of them--empathy--is presented in an interpretation that is meant to depicture (together with the...

The Digital Divide: Some Reflections