Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Mendeley  

Zotero  

Shojaei A A. The virtues of Muslim physicians. IJMEHM 2017; 10 :302-318
URL: http://ijme.tums.ac.ir/article-1-5902-en.html

Medical ethics in a reductive look can be handed to physician’s ethics and then call a physician who adheres to medical ethics attributed to the moral virtues. Moral virtues are counted to be about 137 in the teachings of Shiite, most of which are not related to the practice of medicine but nearly eighty virtues are linked to the practice of medicine.  This number is too much to be handled in a paper and analyzed by verses and hadiths. Therefore, we should take two steps: 1-Limit the virtues of physicians 2- Analyze the virtues of physicians. Believe and practice the virtues emphasized in the teachings of Shiite leads to a monotheistic look to the practice of medicine and provides physicians with a different and transcendental worldview. This insight that stood upon the teachings of the Qur'an and hadiths by Imams (AS) considers the practice of medicine a divine relation and then shows the communication between a physician and others. The current paper analyzes the divine relation of the physician and its impact to the practice of medicine. First literature review performed to find three most virtues. Then Factor analysis method was used and therapeutic virtues were limited to thirteen virtues. Then library study and focus group discussions were used to analyze the selected therapeutic virtues. The practical conclusions is that if we consider medical ethics practice based on virtue, and define and interpret virtues based on the teachings of Shiite, then we will get to a monotheistic view in the practice of medicine that distinguishes Shiite medical ethics monotheistic feature and the secular one, and helps to link between faith and morals.