Teaching health care ethics: the importance of moral sensitivity for moral reasoning

Abstract

Abstract My discussion reflects on the nature of moral sensitivity. The inquiry is guided by a pedagogical concern: if the goal of teaching practical‐minded nurses about health care ethics is to develop the capacity to be aware of ethical implications of certain acts, events and treatments in the health care setting as well as the skills to resolve ethical dilemmas, it seems important to have a clear sense of what it means to be morally sensitive. How, for example, does a health care worker come to recognize in a particular and institutionally defined situation his or her moral responsibilities towards the other? What exactly is moral sensitivity? Is it something that academic philosophers can teach? I argue that moral sensitivity is a capacity for relatedness indispensable to moral theorizing that can be either cultivated or undermined and therefore ought not to be ignored by educators nor those responsible for ethically weighted decision‐making situations.