How Much Ethics Is Needed to Make a Good Doctor?

Abstract

Conclusion: Patients want efficiency, kindness, understanding, and gentleness; and if they have to go through a major ordeal they want to feel that this is only what the doctors involved would want for themselves or their own families. This is what counts. Let us work hard at the aim of wise advice and sound decisions in particular circumstances -- in other words, good medicine, uncluttered by the jargon, slogans, and abstractions of academic ethics. And, in our anxiety not to be arrogant, let us not lose our self-confidence and self-esteem. If we hand over the teaching of medical ethics to outsiders, as some seem to think we should, we send the wrong message to society. For we hand over the core, the kernel, the very heart of good medicine.