Moral Bodies

Ethics, Trust, and Body Practices in Health Care Work

Abstract

Health care professionals are increasing ly committed to provide patient cen tered care. This article analyses how professionals’ collaboration on patient centered care actualizes patients’ bodies, and how patients’ bodies are involved in negotia tions of professional ethics. An important point in this analysis being that bodies are not – not even in health care – to be understood as ‘natural’. Instead they must be conceptualized as moral entities. With a starting point in an empirical study of collaboration between various professionals (medical doctors, midwifes, and nurses) in a maternity ward, we show how this col laboration involves and elaborates in detail patients body practices, which are continuously evaluated by the professionals. We analyse how patients’ body practices be come a – perhaps indispensable – component in interprofessional collaboration on mutual, professional ethics.