Professional Virtues and Social Work Ethics
Submitted by
Student Name
Professional virtue is important as it facilitates and acts as a base to professional values. The 3 important professional virtues have been highlighted below which is elaborated further with the help of example case.
Virtue of honesty
It has been told to doctors that instead of withholding information from patients, they should be completely aware about the potential risk that might be involved in the doctoral procedures. This ensures that patient’s rights are respected which is mandate of honesty. It is imperative that any ethic which is termed to be relevant for specific profession should take account of roles which are most appropriate for the profession. Professional virtues hold importance because without this approach the commitment of doing good for humans lacks inside, without which flowering of human race cannot happen. (Oakley & Cocking 2001)
For everyone it should be possible to demonstrate that how one own role is contributing to the bigger goal of that specific profession. To explain this better, there is commitment in medicine for human health, as this profession clearly counts since it hold importance when flourishment of humans is talked about.
Virtue of Morality
The fact of lawyers’ profession is held that good profession ethics would be showcased when all the rules serves best when value of justice is served. The system sometimes works in slightly different manner in our adversarial system as lawyers tries to serve their client interest by becoming special purpose friend. To pursue interest of their clients, they lead to take actions which are often against the basic moral values. It is argued by some writers on legal ethics that in cases where lawyers are required to do something unjust as regarded by broad based morality, the requirements of role are still decisive. (Oakley & Cocking 2001)
Another school of thought may explain this in a different manner. Lawmakers have a special focus on institutional design which provide rationale for individual’s virtuousness judged by basic moral standards should not account that much. To serve and fulfill their client requirements many writers are sometimes required to act in a manner which violates moral virtues.
Virtue of Caring
This highlights the significance of attributes like loving (or nurturing) and caring which is opposite to the rational and cognitively oriented concepts. For those who advocates this perspective, the important goal of safeguarding the connect between caregivers and care receivers should be taken into consideration while making ethical judgements and decisions. Taking this perspective into consideration, challenges related to ethical issues should not be approached using rational mind which seeks for making the correct or best decision based on moral duty or projection of possible outcomes. Instead, attention should be paid on those ways which directly impact our relationship with involved parties due to our moral dilemmas and basic management of them. It can be said that, Virtue of care is less about making decisions based on best moral judgement, and more about the decision makers engaged in the process which encounter moral issues directly.
It is tough to realize professional virtue without appropriate emotions. On the basis of first impression that we get of professional virtue, it is the compatibility of professional service ideals with values of rational person tells about the professional emotions. This does not suffice in itself as authenticity-supporting working conditions are also required and this condition is only a necessary one that is required. (Professional Virtue 2018).
As identified by Beauchamp and Childress, apart from the above three virtues many other virtues are critically important when ethical judgements and decisions are taken by professionals. This include Compassion (involves regards for another individual which shows signs of caring and beneficence done in order to reduce the suffering), Discernment (use of insights of person, critical judgement), Trustworthiness( a belief that the contacted professional will take action in the right motive and in accordance with the moral norms), Integrity and conscientiousness (being aware of what it takes to be morally right and making efforts in direction to achieve that). (GVPC, 2018)
Considerable amount of richness has been added to the understanding of social workers on ethical decisions which has happened only due to exploration of virtue ethics and ethics of care. It is not good enough to examine rules about what is right or wrong. With the help of virtue theory, it is easily reminded to us that it is quality of decision maker that matters the most. Those social workers possessing virtuous behavior inherit admirable qualities that changes their personality to more compassionate, trustful, better observant and mindful practitioners which manifest real integrity. It can be concluded easily that it is the attribute of social worker making decision more important than only making the right ethical decision.
Different areas where virtues become relevant to us in professional life are discussed next. (Spielthenner 2017)
For proper conduct of professionals, virtues seem to be an essential part. Hence, they are used for selection of candidates for specific occupations. This can be understood by an example. Airlines reject those pilots who show traits of risk taking attitude and seek thrills. For this purpose, where behavioral aspects hold high importance, personality test are carried in medical and various business sectors, to ensure the candidate is the suitable fit for the organization.
There has been certain correlation found between personality and occupational performance of an individual. Personality traits has shown correlation with the performance at workplace and to analyze the performance at workplace, personality questionnaire is a common phenomenon. These questionnaires not only assist in predicting job performance but also result in exploring traits that may not be known to an individual.
For professions like nursing, it has been recommended to add teaching of virtues in their curriculum as the profession include high involvement with lives of other people. Also, it became a requirement to get admit into the school of nursing as virtues is most relevant to them who get into this profession. This was identified as a problem when patient showed dissent over the nursing care that have been provided to them and also dissatisfaction over the poor traits that they were possessing. To improve over the situation, formation of character seems to be a solution. Professional like teaching especially in medical fields has been identified as one of other fields suitable for professional virtues where the need has raised for teaching them.
Social work values include more than 5 core values which encompasses various aspects from individual dignity to human relationships. Also, from social justice to integrity. These values are important as it directly impacts the effectiveness of social activities or programs. The professional virtues are directly related to these values as they establish the moral foundation of organization and guide the social work practice internally.
Social workers make efforts with primary goal of doing exceptional public service through various ways like helping needy people, solving social problems etc. By using their skills and knowledge social workers try to solve problems which their client suffers from like drug addiction, child abuse and anti-social behaviors (McBeath & Webb 2002). Virtue of Caring is required by social workers to complete their work in effective manner. Without this free of charge service is not possible for any individual who volunteer for the community. Social Justice and fight against the injustice done to people is another area where social workers are making efforts. With the virtue of caring they try to promote sensitivity for social justice issues and try to bring acceptability for cultural respect and genetic diversity.
Integrity is one of the key requirements that a social worker must inherit. This is also because they are required to act in trustworthy ways. Both the virtues i.e.honesty and morality are required by them to ensure that they maintain awareness about the organization mission. Integrity must also be maintained for their profession’s value and ethical standards of every individual (Eriksen 2015). Social workers work in improving their career competency to maintain the integrity within themselves. Human relationship is another quality that social workers recognize and give prime importance to that. There is direct involvement of client, professionals and staff belonging to community program in the helping process. They work on maintaining positive relationships with people who might show unpredictable behavior like hostility or unreliable. To handle this properly, the qualities that they need to possess is patience and good communication skills.
Appropriate support and services is received for those who are in need is ensured by these core social work values.
References
Eriksen, A. (2015). What is professional integrity? Etikk i praksis-Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 9(2), 3-17.
Great Valley Publishing Company, I. (2018). Virtue Ethics in Social Work. Socialworktoday.com. Retrieved 20 March 2018, fromhttp://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/060117.shtml
McBeath, G., & Webb, S. A. (2002). Virtue ethics and social work: Being lucky, realistic, and not doing ones duty. British Journal of Social Work, 32(8), 1015-1036.
Oakley, J., & Cocking, D. (2001). Virtue ethics and professional roles. Cambridge University Press.
Professional Virtue. (2018). Stfm.org. Retrieved 20 March 2018, from http://www.stfm.org/FamilyMedicine/Vol48Issue7/Saultz509
Spielthenner, G. (2017). Virtue-based Approaches to Professional Ethics: a Plea for More Rigorous Use of Empirical Science. ethic@-An international Journal for Moral Philosophy, 16(1), 15-34.