Treating threats: the ethical dilemmas of treating threatening patients

Jeanette Lemmergaard and Sara Louise Muhr

The Service Industries Journal, 2008, vol. 29, issue 1, 35-45

Abstract: This paper considers the impact of threats on professional service workers, especially as these emerge in healthcare services. Based on interviews with healthcare professionals and prison guards, this paper discusses the ethical dilemmas inherent in viewing the doctor--patient relationship from a solely rule-based ethical approach when threatening behaviour is involved. It is argued that under threatening circumstances, a service worker will not be able to exclude personal moral beliefs from the decision-making process. Consequently, the tradition of relying on rule-based ethics is insufficient on its own and must be supplemented with a repersonalised ethics of ‘the Other’.

Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02642060802116370 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:servic:v:29:y:2008:i:1:p:35-45

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FSIJ20

DOI: 10.1080/02642060802116370

Access Statistics for this article

The Service Industries Journal is currently edited by Eileen Bridges, Professor Domingo Ribeiro, Ronald Goldsmith, Barry Howcroft and Youjae Yi

More articles in The Service Industries Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().