Introduction: Lost Virtue: Professional Character Development and Medical Education

Abstract

No topic in medical education has received more attention and generated more discussion in recent years than that of “professionalism”. In many ways, this should come as no surprise in light of the dramatic technical and scientific advances in medicine, the changing, and often confounding, roles of physicians in complex health care systems, and the growing expectation throughout society that physicians should provide more effective, patient-centered care. Any of these factors alone is sufficient to create anxiety and confusion about basic duties and responsibilities of physicians to patients, the medical profession and to society. In this complex, demanding, commercialized and yet, values-laden, world of health care it is an understatement to say that there are fundamental challenges to what it means to be a medical professional in today's society.

Citation

Kenny, N. and Shelton, W. (2006), "Introduction: Lost Virtue: Professional Character Development and Medical Education", Kenny, N. and Shelton, W. (Ed.) Lost Virtue (Advances in Bioethics, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. xi-xvii. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3709(06)10012-6