Revisiting the need for virtue in medical practice: A reflection upon the teaching of Edmund Pellegrino

Abstract

Edmund Pellegrino considered medicine as a skill, art, and perhaps most importantly, a moral enterprise. In this essay, I attempt to exemplify how the legacy and contributions of Edmund Pellegrino, as a teacher and a physician, could allow for a renaissance of medical practice in which physicians engage intellectual and moral virtue to both effect sound care, and do so in a humanitarian way, rather than in simple accordance with a business model of medicine. The virtues are viewed in a renewed light as being key characteristics of physicians, and important to patient centered care.