Handbook of Primary Care Ethics 16 Mar 2020, 4:33 pm

Handbook of Primary Care Ethics

Chapter 34: The moral atom: Mapping out the relational world of healthcare professionals

Chapter 35: Moral ecosystems: Exploring the business dimension in healthcare reforms

The Handbook of Primary Care Ethics won first prize in the Primary Care category at the 2018 British Medical Association book awards

My reflections from working in health policies have been channeled in my research interests in ethics in healthcare.

I view each healthcare ecosystem as a dynamic web of dyadic moral links among its stakeholders whose ‘genetic’ differentiation is defined by system goals, care models and funding mechanisms; and the moral atom, the relational world of healthcare professionals as the basic unit of the moral healthcare ecosystem.

The healing process is then situated in an array of professional responsibilities towards other stakeholders within the greater community.

The social and environmental responsibilities of healthcare, effectively the ethical dimensions of sustainability, constitute the ethos of healthcare. This demands expansion of the traditional definition of ethics from the moral duty and obligation at individual level to the ethics of community centering the communal over the individual as the primary locus of moral agency analogous to that reported for education.

Ioanna Psalti, Director, Dime Limited