Virtue Of Care In Health Care

eing part of a health care team, it is important to understand and realize the virtue of care in ‘caring’ for our patients and their families. “The virtue of care is fundamental to relationships, practices and actions in health care.” (Beauchamp, Childress) Your responsibilities and the work that you will be performing is important. It is essential to be aware of and do your best in not only what you do, but also how you do it. Your patients will be able to ‘tell ' a difference if something you do is being done with care or not. Without the element of care, the tasks we preform, the interactions and relationships we would have would remain ‘pale’ and cold. (Beauchamp, Childress) Being caring in our attention and interaction with patients, can bring life, warmth, and a sense of safety and trust. The following are five principal virtues of care. Read, study, understand and contemplate how you can incorporate these into your position of providing care to those you serve. COMPASSION: is performing acts to alleviate the discomfort of another. Or, as Beauchamp and Childress best explained, it is “the awareness or another’s situation and an emotional response of sympathy and tenderness.” (Beauchamp, Childress) This often motivates one to act in effort of alleviating another’s pain/distress. Being aware of and taking actions to relief the distress and pain of your patients is fundamental to your task as their caretaker. An example of this would include observing and asking your patient of their pain – what location, how intense, alleviating/aggravating factors… ; and then proceeding to take actions to give comfort and pain relief – proper medication, cold/heat therapy, positioning, appropriate words of support, etc. This is done sensitively, with continual inquiry and action until the patient has found as much comfort as is possible. DISCERNMENT: is having sensitive and understanding judgment of a situation and of actions to take. This would include being attentive to details, sometimes thinking outside the box and using past experiences to make connections where something may not be obviously present. An example of this would be …show more content…
Patients that come into the hospital are placing a great deal of trust into an organization of skilled individuals they have never or barely know. It is imperative then, or us as the skilled individuals, to value and sustain their trust by giving our best efforts in providing care for each individual patient. Trust is usually built by small and simple instances: remembering a patient by name, being knowledgeable and providing accurate information to the patient’s cares and questions, being attentive and careful of a patient’s pain when providing cares are some ways that can increase a patient’s trust in you as their care provider. Trust can also be weakened or destroyed via simple means as well. A simple illustration of weakening trust would be if a patient asks for a glass of fresh water, but the caregiver repeatedly forgets to deliver even after being asked multiple times.

INTEGRITY: is acting in accordance to moral norms and values. Professional and personal integrity sometimes may be at odds. One who’s profession may require that he preform an act that may be against his own personal moral values. It is important to anticipate specific instances or situations where one’s personal integrity maybe compromised before placed in such a dilemma. Being integritous would be to deny a patient’s request for inappropriate amounts of narcotic drug or to avoid being placed in a position to participate in a specific surgery that is contrary to one’s personal beliefs and