The Ethics of Care and the Ethics of Justice - Term Paper Example

Introduction This paper tries to compare and contrast the ethics of care and the ethics of justice. In line with this, the proponent tries to provideopinion emphasizing which between the above points is most appropriate for nursing. In my own opinion, ethics of care is more appropriate in nursing and the reasons are discussed below. However, before anything else, it is important to define ethics of care and ethics of justice. Ethics of care defined Society is always looking forward to emphasizing rules, justice and fairness, but there is another important issues and this particularly involve the ethics which engaged care. One simple thing associated with ethics of care is relationship. A person is considered to be a moral agent who has the capacity to love, show mercy, affection and more. In other words, the moral identity of a person is based on his ability to feel about his environment and be sensitive to the needs of others as part of the idea of what is morally right or wrong. In other words, an individual tries to adapt to its environment because of his capacity to feel and create relationship. Ethics of care is considered as virtue ethics. In other words, ethics of care values emotional involvement in dealing with the lives of others (Lauritzen, 2002). The point of ethics of care is to preserve or nurture relations in series of relationships and attend and respond to the needs of others (Gilligan, 1993). A very definite example of ethics of care is a deep compassion and willingness to support young women who were experiencing unwanted pregnancies and social condemnation (Allvin et al., 2007). Ethics of justice defined Individual autonomous choice and equality are what the ethics of justice primarily considers (French & Weis, 2000). As pointed out by French and Weis justice is a product of a certain culture. This means that human belief, experience and more are integral parts of the moral justice. The disapproval of adolescent pre-marital sexual relations and abortion is a clear indication of the existence of ethics of justice (Allvin et al., 2007). Ethics of justice is centered on the issue of morality and self. Under the ethics of justice, there is a strong consideration of rights, rational conclusion, differentiating morality from law, definition of self via autonomy and personal confidence, restraining certain actions because of others’ needs, transposing a hierarchy of power into a hierarchy of values, and placing of problem into an impersonal conflict of claims (Gilligan, 1993). In other words, ethics of justice is still product of the human experience, but there is a remarkable impact or influence of the issue of morality and philosophy in it. Care builds up self-esteem There are different needs of the humanity. Some people are hopeless. Some suffered this way due to some personal circumstances or reasons outside of their control. For instance, children who were victims of violence, physical or mental abuse needs primary care and attention. These individuals are hopeless and at some point innocent about how the world is turning against them. In this case, they need more care rather than providing them the justice they deserved. The reason is that the impact of violence may be harmful than trying to find justice for them. It is through effective care they would feel they are loved and their notion about the harsh environment may be changed. Thus, giving care is a way to change an individual’s perspective about life. In other words, the ethics of care is an integral part of someone’s ability to stand in the midst of trials and hardships in life. This is just one of the simple illustrations why care is necessary for everyone. However, placing this at the point of view of clinical practice, care is an essential part of the patients’ need for survival or recovery. According to a certain study, a patient-centered service is associated with the delivery of care (O’Connell & Landers, 2008). It is further emphasized in the said study that patients and their relatives are looking forward to the caring behaviors of nurses especially in critical cases. In a patient-centered care, the health practitioner or expert should be able to connect with the patients well. In this level, the health practitioners are able to address the patients’ mind, body and even spiritual needs (Maizes, Rakel, & Niemiec, 2009). This only emphasises that there is high value given on the importance of interpersonal aspect of care in a patient-centered type of care (Darby, 2002). The point of hospitals to provide the care that their patients deserve is to ensure their remarkable worth and let them feel they are important. Hospitals want to ensure saving the lives of their patients with high level of care which definitely would involve emotional attachment in the process at some point. This can be clearly observed in some hospitals where doctors and nurses allow their patients to be the center in the entire health care activity. This means that patients are deeply involved in the process of giving them medical care especially in the patient-centered type of care (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). Self-esteem is in line with a person’s worth or importance and having such a character to be accountable for his self or her self and to act responsibly towards others (Branden, 1992). Part of self-esteem is self-confidence (Spock & Needlman, 2004). The self-esteem of an individual is associated with his or her experience. For instance, a battered woman has low self-esteem (Clarke, 1986). Successes help promote self-esteem (Green, 2011). A child who is consistently receiving genuine praises or approval develops self-confidence over time (Spock & Needlman, 2004). The above illustrations show that a certain level of care receives by a person is a matter of experience. Care is associated with someone’s experience. Experience contributes to the person’s level of self-esteem. Thus, it is clear that care is capable of providing a high level of person’s self-esteem. In other words, care helps encourage a certain person and it usually promotes positive suggestion of an individual’s worth or importance. For instance, patients under critical conditions and are placed in intensive care units in the hospitals are primary concerns when it comes to high level of care. These patients need remarkable encouragement and it is important that they will be shown with care at the highest level as possible. It is important to encourage these individuals to ensure fast recovery. The goal is to help them strengthen their emotional needs. Hospitals are not just concerned about therapeutic mission and care about their patients but are also dealing with emotion-related job roles (Hartel, Ashkanasy, & Zebe, 2006). In other words, patients do not simply need therapeutic care as widely known to be provided by hospitals, but these establishments also establish emotional attachment with their patients to ensure fast recovery. This case is very common to patients with traumatic or violent experiences, excruciating physical pains and those who are at the brink to the end of life. For instance, in caring patients who are almost at the end of their lives, hospitals allow encouragement for them by letting family members to express their feelings by saying ‘I love you’, ‘I forgive you’, ‘Please forgive me’, ‘I am sorry’ among many others (Matzo & Sherman, 2009). These are definitely encouraging words to the patients that sometimes will give the opportunity for patients to try fight and cooperate with the doctor’s or nurses’ treatment and care. These words motivates the patient’s emotional consciousness and would remind them of their worth as a person. Saying these words would mean giving the best value of care. A person who hears ‘I love you’ from someone else would feel very important and realize the level of his worth as a person. Encouragement is a simple way to boost someone else’s confidence and continue towards something else with greater enthusiasm (Weinberg, 2010). Therefore, it is evident that patients especially those who are under critical conditions need to be encouraged especially in the midst of the treatment. Care has to be remarkably shown with greater quality in order that the patients will be motivated to continue with confidence in the treatment process with great enthusiasm. Furthermore, this would also increase an individual’s self worth because they would feel that someone has been caring for them in a deeper passion. In other words, the quality of care that an individual receives has certain meaning for him or her. The family members for instance who are constantly showing their care create specific emotional impact and meaning for the patients. This would simply mean love for the patients. However, the bottom line is to associate this entire activity with the person’s understanding of his or her self worth. Care can reflect genuine support for patients As stated and mentioned earlier, the level and quality of care can create great emotional impact for the patients. It simply means that with high level of passionate care, a patient will be able to feel his or her entire worth as a person. However, this would also point out to the fact that care can reflect genuine support for patients. Of course, a high level or quality of care simply means genuine support for patients based on the context of ethics of care. In other words, those patients who received extra level of care can absolutely feel the high level of support given for them. The bottom line of this can be traced to the kind of care that health professionals are giving to their patients. It is important to understand that health professionals with genuine concerns for their patients are always looking forward to see if their patients are harmed in the middle of their care (Rowe, 2006). This is exactly what a genuine support would mean based on the ethics of care and from the definition of genuine support given by health professionals to their patients. What is important in this level of care is to exactly show the strong association that can be made out of care and genuine support for patients. Genuine support for patients is necessary especially if they need intensive care in their health condition. This genuine support is actually a reflection of the health professionals’ high level of care for their patients. In the first place, what they can significantly give to their patients is care. This means that the entire connection between the patients and health professionals is definitely rooted in the latter’s ability to provide care. There are different levels of care given for each patient. This depends on their needs and their condition. It is expected that those who need much care are those who are in the intensive care units. However, this is just to put emphasis on the amount or level of care that should be given to each patient based on their individual conditions. However, in reality, care should be based on the actual support that health professionals can give to their patients. However, at some point health professionals are faced with issue about ethical concerns. For instance, some patients ended up to go through alternative care or support as approved by their relatives. For instance, some of them need to undergo mercy killing due to intense hardships that they are going through. Their immediate relatives could no longer bear the excruciating pains that their patients are suffering with. In this case, some relatives would decide to remove the patients’ life saving devices and eventually end up their lives. This of course requires the health professional’s support in the process. Now, the question would be is if this is indeed to be considered a care that can be defined as genuine support for the concerned patient. In some countries, euthanasia is a crime while it is legal in other nations. This only proves that the ethics of justice is simply based on human experience which primarily includes culture, philosophy, and political stand among any others. This only shows that in some countries where euthanasia is allowed, health professionals can eventually exercise their genuine support for it as an integral part of their care for both patients and relatives. In this case, different levels or types of care are tantamount to support that health professionals can eventually give to their patients. The above case simply shows that care in general can eventually reflect genuine support for patients. It is important to understand that as stated in the above case, the ethics of justice can sometimes interfere with how genuine care for patients can be defined. In other words, the ethics of care and ethics of justice at some point will compliment or contradict each other. It is at this point that the given care is without question can be a subjective genuine support that can be given to the patients. However, in cases when ethics of justice contradicts with the ethics of care and vice versa, the definition of care as a genuine support can only be defined based on the context of the latter. As defined earlier, the ethics of care simply emphasizes that the relationship should be built up among individuals and the support should be placed in the context of responding to the needs of others. However, the ethics of justice is composed of moral principles and philosophy based on the human experience. Under this, the law is simply exercised in order to define what is morally good or bad. Let us be reminded then that this contradiction is not an issue. Rather, the point is to emphasize under what circumstance that care is justifiably a genuine support. Based on the above given definition, the ethics of care is very clear on its stand to emphasize relationship and being sensitive to respond to the needs of others. There are actually two important points in here to emphasize what the ethics of care is concerned with. First, the building of relationship among individual is very important under the ethics of care. The building of relationship is essential because it is the core foundation of the ethics of care. It is only through building relationship that care becomes a genuine support because as stated earlier patient-centered care for instance can be primarily considered. The relationship between patients and health professionals should exist and it can be clearly manifested through the level of care that grows in it. It is also important to consider that the kind of care given, as stated earlier can essentially predict the level of support that health professionals are providing with their patients. The second point involves the sensitivity to respond to the needs of others. Under the ethics of care, the needs of the patients should be clearly emphasized because it is only through by knowing them that the kind of care that should be initiated will be known. For instance, cancer patients are known to be given with intensive care. However, a minor stomach ache may only require an outpatient medication and follow up. However, under these two conditions, the support given to patients does not vary because the level of care given depends on the intensity of the needs of the patient in which the entire support relies on. In other words, the care given by health professionals to their patients can be a genuine support if it exactly considers building strong relationship with them and applied with full sensitivity to understanding their needs. Care can have strong emotional equivalence If somebody loves a certain thing, more genuine care is given to it. In other words, there exists an emotional attachment to everything that someone cares so much. For example, a person who values his love so much for a certain person would eventually give a high level of care for that someone else. If that someone does not have so much value for him, he would not actually even care for him or her in the first place. These are just practical realties showing that care can have a strong emotional equivalence from both the point of view of those who give and receive it. Those patients who are completely satisfied with the service they receive from a certain hospital are most likely to refer a friend or try its services again the next time there is a need so. This is based on the principle of providing the best value for the patients. Under this principle, common sense suggests it that it is implied that those patients who feel they are given so much value would most likely to be satisfied. As mentioned earlier, hospitals invest on the care they provide for their patients because it is the only basis of patients in evaluating the kind of care they received from them. Thus, it is important that there should be emotional equivalence that should be built among the patients and emphasized in providing this service. Conclusion In this paper, the proponent tries to emphasize a brief distinction between ethics of care and ethics of justice. Along the way, the ethics of care is emphasized as the necessary of these two to be applied in nursing or in general to be used by health professionals. This is due to the fact that humans are social beings with the capacity to exercise their emotion. This can be clearly observed on how they build relationship or simply being sensitive to the needs of others. In other words, care is necessary because it is an integral part of human’s emotion. In it, the ethics of justice cannot be justified because there is subjectivity under the ethics of care. Care is tantamount to building relationship and depicting the eventual needs of others. The proponent simply wants to emphasize that emotion cannot be eliminated under giving care for patients because it is part of being human. Thus, it is important to consider that the ethics of care should be integrated by health professionals with their service to their patients. In other words, it is important to consider that care essentially builds self-esteem, reflects genuine support for patients, and is having strong emotional equivalence. References Allvin, M. K., Tam, V. V., Nga, N. T., Arvidson, A. B. R., & Johansson, A. (2007). Ethics of justice and ethics of care: Values and attitudes among midwifery students on adolescent sexuality and abortion in Vietnam and their implications for midwifery education: A survey by questionnaire and interview. 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