Relational suffering and the moral authority of love and care

AbstractSuffering is a ubiquitous yet elusive concept in health care. In a field devoted to the pursuit of objective data, suffering is a phenomenon with deep ties to subjective experience, moral values, and cultural norms. Suffering ’s tie to subjective experience makes it challenging to discern and respond to the suffering of others. In particular, the question of whether a child with profound neurocognitive disabilities can suffer has generated a robust discourse, rooted in philosophical conceptualizations of personhood as well as the academic and experiential expertise of practiced health-care professionals. The issue remains unresolved because it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever truly know an infant’s lived experience. But what if this is not the best question? What if instead of asking “can this infant suffer?” the discourse is broadened to ask “is there suffering here?” This latter question demands attention to patients’ subjective experiences of suffering, but also to the web of relationships that envelop them. Without losing sight of the importance of patients’ experiences, considera tion of their relationships may elucidate the presence of suffering when the patients themselves are unable to provide the same clarity. In this essay, care ethics frames an examination of how suffering manifests in the loving and caring relationships that surround an infant with profound neurocogni tive disabilities, changing those relationships and affecting th...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research