By Jonathon Tomlinson
BMJ Blogs
Originally posted April 3, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
Professional identity is particularly strong in doctors and medical students, and perhaps more than our non-medical peers we assimilate this into our personal identity. With this, comes an enhanced sense of moral responsibility; we cannot avoid thinking that we are morally responsible for what happens to our patients.
This spectrum of moral responsibility is intrinsic to our underlying constitution and moral predispositions. The efforts of lawyers, ethicists and moral philosphers to impose definitions seem far removed from experiences like those described above and our self-imposed moral standards.
It is not only our attachment to our professional identity, but the nature of our work that makes us vulnerable to moral luck and agent regret.
The entire article is here.
