Virtue and care ethics & humanism in medical education: a scoping review

Abstract

Purpose: This scoping review explores how virtue and care ethics are incorporated into health professions education and how these factors may relate to the development of humanistic patient care.

Method: Our team identified citations in the literature emphasizing virtue ethics and care ethics (in PubMed, NLM Catalog, WorldCat, EthicsShare, EthxWeb, Globethics.net , Philosopher's Index, and ProQuest Central) lending themselves to constructs of humanism curricula. Our exclusion criteria consisted of non-English articles, those not addressing virtue and care ethics and humanism in medical pedagogy, and those not addressing aspects of character in health ethics. We examined in a stepwise fashion whether citations: 1) Contained definitions of virtue and care ethics; 2) Implemented virtue and care ethics in health care curricula; and 3) Evidenced patient-directed caregiver humanism.

Results: Eight hundred eleven citations were identified, 88 intensively reviewed, and the final 25 analyzed in-depth. We identified multiple key themes with relevant metaphors associated with virtue/care ethics, curricula, and humanism education.

Conclusions: This research sought to better understand how virtue and care ethics can potentially promote humanism and identified themes that facilitate and impede this mission.

Keywords: Care ethics; Humanism; Medical education; Medical ethics; Virtue ethics.