Creating regulatory environments for practical wisdom and role virtues in medical practice

This chapter argues that in the context of professional practice, personal strategies for facilitating virtuous behaviour should be supplemented by the development of regulatory environments which assist practitioners acting from the relevant professional dispositions to hit the targets of those virtues. It proposes two important ways in which policymakers and regulators can successfully help to enable virtuous practitioner behaviour in professional contexts. First, policymakers should create institutional environments that raise doctors' awareness of when such situational 'conducers' or 'inhibitors' are likely to help medical role virtues hit their targets. Second, when evaluating an existing or proposed policy that has some independent rationale, policymakers and regulators should consider the position doctors may be put in by this policy – such as whether the policy threatens to undermine therapeutic doctor-patient relationships. The chapter considers how these two sorts of environmental factors bear on professional virtues. It clarifies the links between professional role virtues and properly oriented practitioner-patient and professional-client relationships.