Presenting a philosophical exploration of the ideas central to health care practice this book explores such concepts as caring, health, disease, suffering and pain from a phenomenological perspective.

Contents: Preface; Part 1 Health Care, Virtue and Education: Caring and professional commitment; Moral education for nursing decisions; Bioethics and caring; Towards a theory of caring; Acting from the virtue of caring; Socratic dialogue and the virtuous clinician. Part 2 The Objects of Health Care: The body and well-being; Health and subjectivity; Disease and subjectivity; Suffering and the goals of medicine; Pain and communication; The meanings of suffering. Bibliography; Index.