About the project
Although responsibility practices are important features of, for instance, criminal and actuarial justice, ascriptions of personal responsibility are typically avoided in the healthcare context. In an attempt to explain this apparent exceptionalism, we explore an understudied aspect of the debate of which (if any) role that personal responsibility should play in priority setting in healthcare. That is, may the conceptualisation of the person in need of medical treatment contribute to explaining a reluctance to ascribe personal responsibility for negative health outcomes?
This project comprises a philosophical inquiry of this very question, as well as an empirical study where we test our hypothesis that the context an action or a situation occurs within will affect whether people consider the person to be (causally) responsible. If people in a lesser degree think that persons are responsible within the health context, then this may explain a reluctance to include assessments of patients’ responsibility for their own health condition in the allocation of scarce healthcare resources.
Outcomes
Fystro, Joar Røkke; Hofmann, Bjørn Morten & Feiring, Eli (2022). On the person in personal health responsibility. BMC Medical Ethics. ISSN 1472-6939. 23. doi: 10.1186/s12910-022-00802-y.
Financing
Financed by the project participants regular funds.
Project start - finish
2020 - 2024