Research

Research at the Plunkett Centre for Ethics
The Centre's research focuses on two main issues:

  • Development of a virtues-based approach to the ethics of health care.
  • Development of a theory of justice in the allocation of health care resources.

A virtues-based approach to the ethics of health care:

  • Why the return to the virtues?
  • What virtues theory has in common with contemporary conseqentialist and deontological theory.
  • What is distinctive of virtues theory?
  • Particularism and virtues-theory.
  • Contributions of virtues theory to the ethics of health care.
  • The contribution of Aquinas to virtue theory.

Justice in the allocation of health care resources:

  • Principles, obligations and virtues.
  • Theories of justice.
  • Rawls, Nozick and the utilitarians.
  • A virtues-based approach to the "good" of health care.
  • Community, the common good and health care distribution.
  • Criteria for allocating health care.
  • Allocating health care to the mentally ill.
  • The ethics of managed care arrangements.
  • Surgical practice in a changing health system: resolving the ethical question.

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Page updated 17-Dec-07