The most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge concerning his own feelings and circumstances that immeasurably surpass those that anyone else can have.-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty / One feature that varies within competing conceptions of medical shared decision-making is how a patient's values are to be engaged by a physician. One detail that can be overlooked under "shared" decision-making is whether or not a physician ought (or be allowed) to attempt to persuade the patient to adopt particular health-related values. Some argue that it is incumbent on a physician to share her privileged understanding of medicine so as to help her patient embrace "better" values. This thesis argues that it is dangerous to patient autonomy for a physician to exert moral suasion on her patient to attempt to influence or change those values; the danger lies in the power imbalance between patients and physicians that seems inherent in medical encounters, and is exacerbated by the sick role. Thus, while a physician ought to help her patient articulate his health-related values, she ought not try to change them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.99576 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Bigney, Mark W. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Philosophy.) |
| Rights | © Mark W. Bigney, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002598468, proquestno: AAIMR32504, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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