Philosophy, medicine and health care – where we have come from and where we are going

Loughlin, Michael; Bluhm, Robyn; Fuller, Jonathan; Buetow, Stephen; Upshur, Ross; Borgerson, Kirstin; Goldenberg, Maya J.; Kingma, Elselijn

doi:10.1111/jep.12275

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Far from being an activity somehow disconnected from practice, it is a precondition of adequate theorising that it enables practitioners to make sense of what they actually do . Such activities as diagnosis, prediction, classification, and treatment embody numerous assumptions about matters including the ontological status of disease, the nature of causality, probability, and the nature of and relationships among rationality, validity, knowledge, value, objectivity, and subjective experience . We have been delighted to publish many excellent articles demonstrating not only that our thinking about these essential underlying matters is not yet settled but offering ways to make substantive progress in the theoretical and practical problems that confront us.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Such activities as diagnosis, prediction, classification, and treatment embody numerous assumptions about matters including the ontological status of disease, the nature of causality, probability, and the nature of and relationships among rationality, validity, knowledge, value, objectivity, and subjective experience. [5][6][7][8] We have been delighted to publish many excellent articles demonstrating not only that our thinking about these essential underlying matters is not yet settled but offering ways to make substantive progress in the theoretical and practical problems that confront us. Even the most apparently reasonable assumption of the "anti-philosophical" authors, that confusion is invariably unhelpful, is not strictly correct.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reasoning, evidence, and clinical decision‐making: The great debate moves forward

Loughlin¹,

Bluhm

Buetow

et al. 2017

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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When the editorial to the first philosophy thematic edition of this journal was published in 2010, critical questioning of underlying assumptions, regarding such crucial issues as clinical decision making, practical reasoning, and the nature of evidence in health care, was still derided by some prominent contributors to the literature on medical practice. Things have changed dramatically. Far from being derided or dismissed as a distraction from practical concerns, the discussion of such fundamental questions, and their implications for matters of practical import, is currently the preoccupation of some of the most influential and insightful contributors to the on-going evidence-based medicine debate. Discussions focus on practical wisdom, evidence, and value and the relationship between rationality and context. In the debate about clinical practice, we are going to have to be more explicit and rigorous in future in developing and defending our views about what is valuable in human life.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning, evidence, and clinical decision‐making: The great debate moves forward

Loughlin¹,

Bluhm

Buetow

et al. 2017

Evaluation Clinical Practice

Self Cite

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“…For example, western science believes that life in human beings constitutes the coexistence of the physical body, spirit or soul. The existence of the spirit as part of giving life to the body is not based on sciences, but on a belief system which is common to all [35][36][37].…”

Section: Convergent and Divergent Views Between Allopathic Health Pramentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The opposite is also true. There are diseases, which infect/attack the physical body without affecting the spiritual aspect [35,[38][39][40]. Allopathic practitioners are well resourced to diagnose and manage both that of the body and spirit.…”

Section: Convergent and Divergent Views Between Allopathic Health Pramentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Science of Indigenous Health System: Key to Sustainable Collaborations

Nemutandani¹,

Hendrick²,

Mulaudzi³

2020

Public Health in Developing Countries - Challenges and Opportunities

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Most of the health systems in developing countries are dysfunctional and hardly responsive to the needs and demands of patients. Access to a plural healthcare system and reports of patients abandoning western medicine for indigenous medicine are signs of nonresponsive health system. The major contributing factors are the failures of the allopathic health system to recognize that indigenous medicine is a living and practised science, with its own philosophy, beliefs and practices developed over centuries. Indigenous communities and the patient's worldviews are intertwined with indigenous traditions, practices and beliefs. While the two health systems, allopathic and indigenous, coexist in Africa, they must collaborate in the management of patients. The two systems assign different etiological explanations and meanings to health, disease and illness based on worldviews, epistemologies and methodologies developed over time. Change of mindset, attitudes and practices through decolonization will lead to sustainable collaboration.

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“…Last year saw the 20th anniversary edition of JECP, and in the introduction to the philosophy section of that landmark edition, we posed the question: apart from ethics, what is the role of philosophy ‘at the bedside’ [8]? The purpose of this question was not to downplay the significance of ethics to clinical practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diseases, patients and the epistemology of practice: mapping the borders of health, medicine and care

Loughlin¹,

Bluhm

Fuller

et al. 2015

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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Last year saw the 20th anniversary edition of JECP, and in the introduction to the philosophy section of that landmark edition, we posed the question: apart from ethics, what is the role of philosophy 'at the bedside'? The purpose of this question was not to downplay the significance of ethics to clinical practice. Rather, we raised it as part of a broader argument to the effect that ethical questions -about what we should do in any given situation -are embedded within whole understandings of the situation, inseparable from our beliefs about what is the case (metaphysics), what it is that we feel we can claim to know (epistemology), as well as the meaning we ascribe to different aspects of the situation or to our perception of it. Philosophy concerns fundamental questions: it is a discipline requiring us to examine the underlying assumptions we bring with us to our thinking about practical problems. Traditional academic philosophers divide their discipline into distinct areas that typically include logic: questions about meaning, truth and validity; ontology: questions about the nature of reality, what exists; epistemology: concerning knowledge; and ethics: how we should live and practice, the nature of value. Any credible attempt to analyse clinical reasoning will require us to think carefully about these types of question and the relationships between them, as they influence our thinking about specific situations and problems. So, the answers to the question we posed, about the role of philosophy at the bedside, are numerous and diverse, and that diversity is illustrated in the contributions to this thematic edition.

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Philosophy, medicine and health care – where we have come from and where we are going

Cited by 6 publications

References 66 publications

Reasoning, evidence, and clinical decision‐making: The great debate moves forward

Reasoning, evidence, and clinical decision‐making: The great debate moves forward

Understanding the Science of Indigenous Health System: Key to Sustainable Collaborations

Diseases, patients and the epistemology of practice: mapping the borders of health, medicine and care

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