scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
JournalISSN: 1386-7423

Medicine Health Care and Philosophy 

Springer Science+Business Media
About: Medicine Health Care and Philosophy is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Philosophy of medicine & Medical law. It has an ISSN identifier of 1386-7423. Over the lifetime, 1326 publications have been published receiving 21915 citations.


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is suggested that a phenomenological toolkit may be part of an effort to ameliorate epistemic injustice and that many aspects of the experience of illness are difficult to understand and communicate and this often owes to gaps in collective hermeneutical resources.
Abstract: In this paper we argue that ill persons are particularly vulnerable to epistemic injustice in the sense articulated by Fricker (Epistemic injustice. Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). Ill persons are vulnerable to testimonial injustice through the presumptive attribution of characteristics like cognitive unreliability and emotional instability that downgrade the credibility of their testimonies. Ill persons are also vulnerable to hermeneutical injustice because many aspects of the experience of illness are difficult to understand and communicate and this often owes to gaps in collective hermeneutical resources. We then argue that epistemic injustice arises in part owing to the epistemic privilege enjoyed by the practitioners and institutions of contemporary healthcare services—the former owing to their training, expertise, and third-person psychology, and the latter owing to their implicit privileging of certain styles of articulating and evidencing testimonies in ways that marginalise ill persons. We suggest that a phenomenological toolkit may be part of an effort to ameliorate epistemic injustice.

300 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that the existential view of well-being that the alternative conceptualisation offers is pivotal to lifeworld-led care in that it provides a direction for care and practice that is intrinsically and positively health focused in its broadest and most substantial sense.
Abstract: In this paper we offer an appreciation and critique of patient-led care as expressed in current policy and practice. We argue that current patient-led approaches hinder a focus on a deeper understanding of what patient-led care could be. Our critique focuses on how the consumerist/citizenship emphasis in current patient-led care obscures attention from a more fundamental challenge to conceptualise an alternative philosophically informed framework from where care can be led. We thus present an alternative interpretation of patient-led care that we call ‘lifeworld-led care’, and argue that such lifeworld-led care is more than the general understanding of patient-led care. Although the philosophical roots of our alternative conceptualisation are not new, we believe that it is timely to re-consider some of the implications of these perspectives within current discourses of patient-centred policies and practice. The conceptualisation of lifeworld-led care that we develop includes an articulation of three dimensions: a philosophy of the person, a view of well-being and not just illness, and a philosophy of care that is consistent with this. We conclude that the existential view of well-being that we offer is pivotal to lifeworld-led care in that it provides a direction for care and practice that is intrinsically and positively health focused in its broadest and most substantial sense.

281 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper revisits the potential of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld and how lifeworld-led care could provide important ideas and values that are central to the humanisation of healthcare practice, without constraining the possible varieties of confluent practices.
Abstract: In this paper, we describe the value and philosophy of lifeworld-led care. Our purpose is to give a philosophically coherent foundation for lifeworld-led care and its core value as a humanising force that moderates technological progress. We begin by indicating the timeliness of these concerns within the current context of citizen-oriented, participative approaches to healthcare. We believe that this context is in need of a deepening philosophy if it is not to succumb to the discourses of mere consumerism. We thus revisit the potential of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld and how lifeworld-led care could provide important ideas and values that are central to the humanisation of healthcare practice. This framework provides a synthesis of the main arguments of the paper and is finally expressed in a model of lifeworld-led care that includes its core value, core perspectives, relevant indicative methodologies and main benefits. The model is offered as a potentially broad-based approach for integrating many existing practices and trends. In the spirit of Husserl’s interest in both commonality and variation, we highlight the central, less contestable foundations of lifeworld-led care, without constraining the possible varieties of confluent practices.

258 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The proposed definitions render it empirically possible to diagnose persons as healthy or diseased and to apportion some of the responsibility for their state of health to individuals themselves, which favourably contrast with those resulting from the WHO-definition of health.
Abstract: A multifactorial and growing crisis of health care systems in the developed world has affected medicine. In order to provide rational responses, some central concepts of the past, such as the definitions of health and disease, need to be updated. For this purpose physicians should initiate a new debate. As a point of departure the following definitions are proposed: Health is a dynamic state of wellbeing characterized by a physical, mental and social potential, which satisfies the demands of a life commensurate with age, culture, and personal responsibility. If the potential is insufficient to satisfy these demands the state is disease. This term includes sickness, illness, ill health, and malady. The described potential is divided into a biologically given and a personally acquired partial potential. Their proportions vary throughout the life cycle. The proposed definitions render it empirically possible to diagnose persons as healthy or diseased and to apportion some of the responsibility for their state of health to individuals themselves. Treatment strategies should always consider three therapeutic routes: improvements of the biologically given and of the personally acquired partial potentials and adaptations of the demands of life. These consequences favourably contrast with those resulting from the WHO-definition of health.

255 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The task in this paper will be to present the two principal rival types of theories of health and illness and present what I take to be the main kind of reasoning by which the authors could assess these theories, and to present a deeper characterization of the principal rival theories.
Abstract: Contemporary philosophy of health has been quite focused on the problem of determining the nature of the concepts of health, illness and disease from a scientific point of view. Some theorists claim and argue that these concepts are value-free and descriptive in the same sense as the concepts of atom, metal and rain are value-free and descriptive. To say that a person has a certain disease or that he or she is unhealthy is thus to objectively describe this person. On the other hand it certainly does not preclude an additional evaluation of the state of affairs as undesirable or bad. The basic scientific description and the evaluation are, however, two independent matters, according to this kind of theory. Other philosophers claim that the concept of health, together with the other medical concepts, is essentially value-laden. To establish that a person is healthy does not just entail some objective inspection and measurement. It presupposes also an evaluation of the general state of the person. A statement that he or she is healthy does not merely imply certain scientific facts regarding the person's body or mind but implies also a (positive) evaluation of the person's bodily and mental state. My task in this paper will be, first, to present the two principal rival types of theories and present what I take to be the main kind of reasoning by which we could assess these theories, and second, to present a deeper characterization of the principal rival theories of health and illness.

241 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202329
202272
202180
202068
201962
201854