PURPOSE: This scoping review explores how virtue and care ethics are incorporated into curricular design and how these factors relate to the development of humanistic patient care.
METHOD: Our team identified citations in the literature emphasizing virtue ethics and care ethics (in PubMed, NLM Catalog, WorldCat, EthicsShare, EthxWeb, Globethics.net, Philosopher’s Index, and ProQuest Central) lending themselves to constructs of humanism pedagogy. Our exclusion criteria consisted of non-English articles, those not addressing virtue and care ethics and humanism in medical pedagogy, and those not addressing aspects of character in health ethics. We examined in a stepwise fashion whether citations: 1) Contained definitions of virtue and care ethics; 2) Implemented virtue and care ethics in health care pedagogy; and 3) Evidenced patient-directed caregiver humanism.
RESULTS: 796 citations were identified, 88 intensively reviewed, and the final 25 analyzed in-depth. By first identifying multiple key themes with subsequent translation in virtue and care ethics (reciprocal translation), we developed a line of argument synthesis utilizing nine themes associated with virtue/care ethics, curricula, and humanism education.
CONCLUSIONS: This research identified a line of argument synthesis regarding how virtue and care ethics can potentially promote humanism and identified themes that facilitate and impede this mission.