Why is health care special?

Why the Critics of Poor Health Service Delivery Are the Causes of Poor Service Delivery: A Need to Train the Policy-makers; Comment on “Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?”

This comment on Professor Fotaki’s Editorial agrees with her arguments that training health professionals in more compassionate, caring and ethically sound care will have little value unless the system in which they work changes. It argues that for system change to occur, senior management, government members and civil servants themselves need training so that they learn to understand the effec...

Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?

Recent disclosures of failures of care in the National Health Service (NHS) in England have led to debates about compassion deficits disallowing health professionals to provide high quality responsive care. While the link between high quality care and compassion is often taken for granted, it is less obvious how compassion – often originating in the individual’s emotional response – can become ...

Why Good Quality Care Needs Philosophy More Than Compassion; Comment on “Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?”

Although Marianna Fotaki’s Editorial is helpful and challenging by looking at both the professional and institutional requirements for reinstalling compassion in order to aim for good quality healthcare, the causes that hinder this development remain unexamined. In this commentary, 3 causes are discussed; the boundary between the moral and the political; Neoliberalism; and the underdevelopment ...

Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Healthcare? Comments From an Academic Physician; Comment on “Why and How Is Compassion Necessary to Provide Good Quality Healthcare?”

This is a short commentary to the editorial issued by Marianna Fotaki, entitled: “Why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare.” It introduces the necessity of a more cognitive approach to explore further the determinants of behavior towards compassionate care. It raises questions about the importance of training towards a more patient-care and values driven healthcare...

Why Even the Logic of Re-Defined Choice May Still Contradict the Logic of Care in Public Health Systems?

High need patients receiving targeted entitlements: what responsibilities do they have in primary health care?

Patient responsibilities in primary health care are controversial and, by comparison, the responsibilities of high need patients are less clear. This paper aims to suggest why high need patients receiving targeted entitlements in primary health care are free to have prima facie special responsibilities; why, given this freedom, these patients morally have special responsibilities; what these re...