Phronesis in Medical Practice: The Will and the Skill Needed to Do the Right Thing

Abstract

Despite remarkable advances in both diagnosis and treatment, there is a growing discontent with healthcare – both from patients, and from clinicians themselves. One could argue that there has been a focus on the technical knowledge of medicine, but a failure to develop the phronesis or practical wisdom necessary to do medicine in the best way possible. The choices we must make often occur in ambiguous, complex, and contradictory circumstances where we rarely have complete information. So, what helps us to make wise choices in these complex circumstances? In this chapter we seek to describe how practical wisdom is necessary for every aspect of doctoring and describe the necessary skills and capacities for practical wisdom. To help us in doing so, we will sketch out some of the everyday decisions doctors make that require practical wisdom and look at why the character virtues and moral skills constitutive of practical wisdom are critical to practicing medicine well. To conclude the chapter, we offer thoughts on how practical wisdom can be learned in medicine using two institutional case studies.