ABSTRACT
Although the clinical and the sexual are commonly treated as antithetical realms of experience, queer commentary teaches that the clinic is a positively sexual space and that clinical intimacy is a creative form of sexual intimacy. Contrary to writers such as Engelhardt, the clinic is a space where queer publics are forged, and the barriers between moral friends and moral strangers potentially dissolve, but only to the extent that one is disposed to allow oneself to enjoy experiences of identification that confound the ideals of human dignity typically invoked in writings about sexual ethics on the one hand and clinical medical ethics on the other hand.
Subject(s)
Health Facilities , Philosophy , Sexual Behavior , Homosexuality, Male , Humans , Male , MoralsSubject(s)
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation , Communication , Hospitalists , Patient Admission , Physician-Patient Relations , Female , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
Medical humanities purchases its presence on the medical side of university campuses by adopting as its own the ends of medicine and medical ethics. It even justifies its presence by asserting promotion of those ends as an ethical imperative, most of all to improve the caring in medical care. As unobjectionable, even praiseworthy, as this imperative appears, it actually constrains the possibilities for interpersonal relationship in the context of medical practice. Development of those possibilities requires openness of self to the existentially challenging ethical imperative to care also literally for nothing at all.
Subject(s)
Ethics, Medical , Humanities/ethics , Humans , Interpersonal Relations , Love , Moral Obligations , Social IdentificationSubject(s)
Advanced Cardiac Life Support , Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation , Decision Making/ethics , Emergency Medical Services , Medical Futility , Public Opinion , Resuscitation Orders , Advance Directives/ethics , Advanced Cardiac Life Support/adverse effects , Advanced Cardiac Life Support/ethics , Advanced Cardiac Life Support/history , Advanced Cardiac Life Support/trends , Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation/adverse effects , Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation/ethics , Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation/history , Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation/trends , Choice Behavior/ethics , Emergency Medical Services/ethics , Emergency Medical Services/standards , Emergency Medical Services/trends , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Presumed Consent , Resuscitation Orders/ethics , United StatesABSTRACT
Abstract:Narrative ethics has recently been advanced as an alternative to more "principled" and "theoretical" approaches to medical ethics. This turn prompts reflection on the distinctive activity of writing medical ethics. When writing medical ethics is recognized as a distinct activity, the forms of care it accomplishes can be distinguished from medical care. This distinction enables analysis of how caring for one's own needs as a writer of medical ethics is in productive tension with the ends of caring in medicine. One important good of writing medical ethics is that the act of writing forces one to reflect on the common mortal reality that is a condition of medical experience. Because it provides occasions for reflection on one's own mortality, medical ethics may no longer need immediate medical application in order to claim its contribution to caring.
