Healthcare Communication Ethics

Health care communication ethics protects and promotes the good of responsive hope and the good of care for the Other in meeting moments of robust heath, normal difficulties, the tragic, and the inevitable.

Arnett, Ronald C.; Fritz, Janie; Bell, Leeanne M. (2008-08-04). Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Kindle Locations 3791-3793). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

The authors talk about the difference between optimism and hope. Per their definition, optimism is a demand for life to conform to their wishes, and fades when reality doesn’t agree. Per their definition, hope is a responsiveness that endures in the face of disappointment.

This chapter has four metaphors of praxis:

• Health Care Communication
• Health
• Responsiveness
• Care

Healthcare becomes more central to people’s lives as they age. Good communication in healthcare situations becomes essential in getting the best care. The authors center this chapter on what they say is the core of healthcare communication ethics — a responsive hope to the questions raised by human health.

The term health is one that requires an adjective to have meaning. Health can have “vigor, its lack, and the inevitability of death.” It also gets to face the “final freedom” — our response to the fate we can no longer change.

As we see, it is response that is key to healthcare:

Health care communication ethics understands health not in what happens to us, but in our response to that which meets us. Viktor Frankl’s reminder of the notion of final freedom is central to health care communication ethics. When it seems that all roads that we seek to follow are blocked, our final freedom rests in our stand against the inevitable.

Arnett, Ronald C.; Fritz, Janie; Bell, Leeanne M. (2008-08-04). Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Kindle Locations 3851-3853). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

No matter what we encounter, whether we experience “joy, sadness or sorrow,” our response is the one thing we always have freedom to choose, and which determines the good of our communication.

But the health communication is centered on “care”. How does our communication provide care to ourselves and others.

This focus on responsiveness and care is illustrated many times in Les Miserables. Cosette is rescued and cared for by Valjean. Marius grandfather cares for him when he is wounded. Both Cosette and Marius care for Valjean in his final hours, nourishing his hopeful spirit in his time of decline.