The Virtuous Physician

I propose a notion of virtuous physician to address the quality-of-care and professionalism crises plaguing modern medicine. To that end, I discuss the nature of the two crises and efforts to resolve them. I then briefly introduce the notion of virtuous physician and outline its basic features. Next, I discuss virtue theory, along with virtue ethics and epistemology, and specific virtues, especially as they relate to medicine. I then explore the ontological priority of caring as the metaphysical virtue for grounding a notion of virtuous physician, and two ontic virtues - care and competence. Next, I examine the transformation of competence into prudent wisdom and care into personal radical love to forge the compound virtue of prudent love, which is sufficient for defining the virtuous physician. I then reconstruct two clinical case stories, which illustrate the various virtues associated with medical practice. Finally, I discuss how the notion of virtuous physician addresses the quality-of-care and professionalism crises.