Nurses as nurse of a Clinical Ethics consultant

Abstract

In his masterful book on the doctor-patient relationship, Don Pedro Laín Entralgo points out that the doctor, and by extension all health professionals, must have two loves: the love of his profession, and he calls it philotekhnia and love for the sick and he calls it philanthropia.



I have spent many years as a professor in several medical schools and I believe that I have rarely witnessed the philanthropia between my faculty colleagues and the students I have had. When I have tried to understand why, the answer is almost always the same: before the patient you have to be objective, and by loving it you lose objectivity.