1. Care ethics in transnational healthcare: attentiveness, competence, and responsibility in medical travel facilitation.
- Author
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Hartmann, Sarah
- Subjects
- *
ATTENTION , *NEGOTIATION , *ETHICS , *RESPONSIBILITY , *VIRTUE - Abstract
Travelling abroad and seeking healthcare beyond the national healthcare system is a reality for many patients, and a whole industry has evolved around medical travel over the last decades. Transnational healthcare is highly mediated, and different sorts of facilitators contribute to making medical travel more feasible and comfortable for international patients. However, the negotiation of different options, interests, and values around care is challenging, ethically complex, and compounded by the transnational context. This paper draws on care ethics to discuss the ways in which complexities around care are being negotiated through practices of medical travel facilitation between Oman and India. To do so, the paper analyses the process of selecting a healthcare provider abroad – one of the critical moments of mediating medical travel – in detail, with special attention to the ethical virtues of attentiveness, competence, and responsibility. The empirical data illustrates some of the ethical challenges around care, which are accentuated in transnational healthcare, and builds up a care ethic that allows for negotiations to be a situational and a collaborative effort towards a 'good enough' compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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