Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Collective Responsibility in Health Care

1982; Oxford University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jmp/7.1.11

1744-5019

Luke Newton,

Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

Traditional medical ethics, developed to apply to the contingencies of individual fee-for-service medical practice, do not always seem to speak to the problems of the new forms and locations of health care: the medical team, the hospital, the organized health-care profession, and the society as a whole as guarantor of all health care and education. It is the purpose of this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy to articulate guidelines for describing and attributing responsibility for health care in these collective providers. This introduction attempts to provide the conceptual apparatus for a discussion of collective responsibility in health care, by the elucidation of the multiple meanings of "responsibility" and the articulation of three standard models for collective responsibility. In the light of these models, the question is put: can the health-care professions and their various subunits and institutions accept and exercise moral responsibility for health care? Its importance is stressed, and its answer left to the contributors.A conceptual approach to the attribution of responsibility within the collective bodies that provide health care is presented. The model of collective responsibility most applicable to health care systems is the authorization model within which a set of established rules delineates responsibility of individuals within the group. The author believes a developed structure of responsibilities in hospitals and within care teams should be implemented. Members of the health care professions are held responsible for the improvement of care within the practitioner's immediate situation rather than for the social problem of equity in the distribution of services.