Virtue ethics and public policy: Upholding medical virtue in therapeutic relationships as a case study

In this paper I develop a model for policy applications of virtue ethics in the context of professional roles, focusing on medical practice.1 I argue that the state has an obligation to maintain doctors’ medical virtues, because the state already accepts a commitment to help doctors maintain the therapeutic orientation of doctor-patient relationships, and doctors’ medical virtues (or otherwise) are revealed in the nature of the professional relationships they develop and maintain with their patients. I focus on the impact on doctors’ prescribing behavior of various commercial influences – via patients, and directly upon doctors – as case studies to illustrate this proposal.