In this part of a series on medical ethics, Thomas Ballantine, William Bennett, John Curnutte, Allen Dyer, and Chase Peterson discuss ethics beyond the realm of difficult decisions, debating everyday issues such as keeping patients waiting. In contrast to earlier episodes in this series, the speakers address the behavior of individual doctors and the principle of compassion in one’s everyday approach to his or her medical practice. They discuss compensation as a financial, emotional, or temporal concept, and they reflect on holistically caring for themselves, their families, their patients, and their patients’ families as all being part of a doctor’s purview. John Agresto joins the conversation.
At the time of this interview, Ballantine was professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. Bennett was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Curnutte was a research fellow in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute. Dyer, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1981-82), was professor of psychiatry at Duke Medical Center. Peterson was vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah. Agresto, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center, was special programs officer at the Center.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
