The Need to Understand Philosophy in Healthcare
Philosophy? What can those of us in healthcare learn from philosophy? Does philosophy have any practical benefits that can be applied to society and healthcare? When many of us hear about philosophy we are compelled to think about a course that we may have had to take for a humanities requirement in college. Or the thought of philosophy may conjure up some thought about individuals who sit around a table drinking coffee, intellectualizing for the sake of intellectualizing, without any practical purpose for this activity. Who in the world wants to sit around and debate whether a tree that falls in the forest still makes a sound if no one is there to hear it! However, the practical implications for understanding philosophy are greater than most people come to assume. I personally am not a philosopher by training, but I have come to understand the importance of philosophy, especially as it pertains to the field of healthcare.
As a person who has been involved in science and trained in this area, what practical importance can I see in philosophy, especially for healthcare practice and administration? First, I have come to be quite aware that science and scientific explanations are not always satisfactory. We live in an era where we think that reductionistic strategies found in scientific explanations can work in all areas, including healthcare management. Although some post-modernistic thinkers have questioned this as well, many of their explanations go to a different extreme, which often fail to be satisfactory as well. So where does having some level of philosophical understanding fit for those in healthcare and especially long-term care?
Many problems in healthcare are not easily reducible, and many fail to be explained by empirically clear and concise scientific tenets. Many of these problems lend themselves strongly to engaging in thinking that may not have one correct answer. Understanding the philosophical complexity of our world helps us to think about the problems that are presented with a profundity that extends beyond the sciolism and triteness that many use to solve complex issues.
Think briefly about the areas of ethics. Ethics is an area that has been, and still is, strongly influenced by the discipline of philosophy. Ethics is part of every aspect of our lives. The healthcare area is no exception. In fact, healthcare may be the one institution of our society in which ethics plays its greatest role. How many of us who work in long-term care are confronted daily with decisions that ultimately have a compelling and profound impact on our lives, on the lives of those that work with us, as well as on the lives of those that we serve. Of course healthcare is filled with many issues that are clear, in which we have an unambiguous and ethically firm understanding of what we need to do and how we need to act.
When things are going well and when decisions are clear we often do not think much about the importance of having training and understanding in the area of philosophical ethics. However, during periods of ambiguity, when decisions that need to be made about issues are not clear cut, this is the period when we become acutely aware that science or some decision-making algorithm are often not available to help us through this difficult process.
Furthermore, many of use are not aware that even though most of us are not formally trained philosophers, we all have a philosophy that helps shape how we come to see the world and understand problems. We all have particular sets of values, ideas and assumptions that shape how we come to understand and frame the problems that we are faced with daily. Therefore, it behooves us to understand more about the way we think, the way we come to understand problems, how we can better understand our own particular strengths and weaknesses, and how we can improve our thinking about the daily problems we face in long-term care.
Look at the problems that we are faced with in long-term care that often tax our problem-solving ability. How many of us have had to advise or help counsel a family member about important matters such as their concerns about a dying family member and what type of treatment they should choose. What should be our ethical approach in this matter? Is there one correct approach? Should we not provide any input since they are the guardian or durable power of attorney? In other words, is there a concise and empirically scientific explanation we can look to or a step-by-step algorithm that we could follow? Typically not and this is why understanding the importance of philosophy and the philosophy of ethics is very important.
The cancer or heart disease that the resident may be dying of is often easy to explain on a scientific level. But what about those stomach-turning human decisions that are not easy to reconcile? Decisions such as what type of care to provide or not provide, or in other words many of those decisions with a considerable level of relativity and ambiguity that fail to have clear parameters of correctness or incorrectness are the ones that we struggle with most. Moreover, these matters do not just cover health care issues, but issues related to workers, the work environment, as well as those problems that we personally face as being part of this environment.
In writing this blog I am not attempting to instigate a heightened enrollment in local college philosophy classes. However, I am attempting to convey the importance of philosophy in the area of decision making in health care, in particular, long-term care. Often, we eschew the importance that philosophical theory can have in our lives and yet, as mentioned, we all have a philosophy that shapes our views and our decisions. Quite important is the field of ethics, which health care professionals deal with daily. Having an understanding of utilitarianism or deontological theory as it applies to ethics can have a powerful impact on how we come to view those ethical issues that we are frequently inundated with and fail to have any clear, correct answer for. Furthermore, understanding more about the philosophical importance of these issues also will come to shape us as professionals in long-term care.
So to answer the question that we started out with, "does philosophy have any practical importance to long-term care professionals," the answer is yes. The ability to use a discipline that helps us think more soundly about the myriad of compelling decisions that we are faced with daily will ultimately help with the betterment of our profession.