The potential weaponisation of kindness

Sokol discusses the General Medical Council’s guidance that doctors should treat patients and colleagues with kindness.1 Kindness is intrinsically prosocial; there cannot be many people who don’t believe that kindness is a good thing. But it isn’t a cut and dried concept.In professional situations, where resources are tight and we are making decisions about allocation, we can be kind from one patient’s perspective while being callous or unkind from another’s. Additionally, kindness is not a dominant value—for example, it’s not more important to be kind if this means withholding information that might hurt someone than to respect the autonomy of a competent adult who asks a specific question.The GMC says that we have to be kind and has helpfully given examples. But there is a fundamental problem with the measurement of kindness: how an act is perceived is what matters, not the intent of the actor. We interpret acts through…
Read Original Article: The potential weaponisation of kindness »