3 Incorporate the spiritual and emotional dimensions of human development into one’s practice of care.
4 Incorporate a working knowledge of at least one ethical theory appropriate to one’s professional context.
Further integration with the social sciences is in ITP 3. Here is a great area for the candidate to be aware of Piaget’s and Erickson’s theories of development. James Fowler was influenced by these theorists to develop one that looks at faith. For a more recent examination of Fowler’s theory, Benjamin Jones has sought to update and re-imagine these streams of thought and puts forward a strong case for a development theory from socialization to refinement.[1]
If all this engagement with theories and academia has not scared you off yet, ITP 4 still has a chance. A basic understanding of ethics in the medical field will be a gift to your work. The most cited field is bioethics which focuses on the big four categories of patient autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice.[2] Given that the history of bioethics has been at odds with religious thought from conception, this area can be difficult to navigate for a person of faith. For my process, I rely on narrative ethics as described by Steve Wilkins.[3]
Patient autonomy belongs within the narrative of the patient. Bioethics were created without pluralism in mind and like many theories established in the 1900s, they now must submit to the multicultural world we live in. The capacity for religion to inform ethics “must command attention for any attempt adequately to respect the difference between people.”[4] For a personal application, I also rely on using John Frame’s three perspectives; situational, normative, and existential.[5]
[1] Benjamin Jones, “Reimagining Fowler’s Stages of Faith: Shifting from a Seven Stage to a Four Step Framework for Faith Development,” Journal of Beliefs & Values 44 (2, 2022: 168.
[2] Tom Beauchamp and James F Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 190.
[3] Steve Wilkins, Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics: An Introduction to Theories of Right and Wrong (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 147.
[4] Mark J. Hanson, “The Religious Difference in Clinical Healthcare,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7, no. 1 (1998): 66.
[5] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2008), 33.
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