The moral nature of patient-centeredness: is it "just the right thing to do"?
OBJECTIVE
Patient-centeredness is regarded as an important feature of high quality patient care, but little effort has been devoted to grounding patient-centeredness as an explicitly moral concept. We sought to describe the moral commitments that underlie patient-centered care.


METHODS
We analyzed the key ideas that are commonly described in the literature on patient-centeredness in the context of three major schools of ethical thought.


RESULTS
Consequentialist moral theories focus on the positive outcomes of providing patient-centered care. Deontological theories emphasize how patient-centered care reflects the ethical norms inherent in medicine, such as respect for persons and shared decision-making. Virtue-based theories highlight the importance of developing patient-centered attitudes and traits, which in turn influence physicians' behaviors toward their patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Different ethical theories concentrate on different features of patient-centered care, but all can agree that patient-centeredness is morally valuable.


CONCLUSIONS
In order to sustain patient-centeredness as a moral concept, practitioners and students ought to examine these ideas to determine what their own personal reasons are for or against adopting a patient-centered approach.
Duggan
Patrick S
PS
Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Geller
Gail
G
Cooper
Lisa A
LA
Beach
Mary Catherine
MC
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003142:Communication; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D028663:Ethical Theory; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D009014:Morals; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000941:ethics*; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D010819:Physician's Role / Q000523:psychology; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations / Q000941:ethics*; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012945:Social Values; D028722:Virtues