Looking to Our Own and Others’ Emotions to Identify Ethical Challenges That We May Resolve Better

In this piece, I address two topics, both built on articles in this issue. The first involves a new, possibly more effective approach that ethics consultants may use when they want to tell the providers consulting them that they think they should treat a patient differently. These authors call this approach “curious engagement.” The second topic I discuss involves what moved the above authors to want to imagine and then propose this new approach, since what moved them may similarly move others to also want to innovate. I suggest that the best way to identify ethical practices needing improvement is to look to painful emotions experienced by oneself or others. I give two clinical examples further illustrating how providers may do this. The first involves the provider evaluating a patient for the interests of a third party, not for this patient’s interests. The patient here feels frightened and alone. The second is taken from another article in this issue and involves a patient just waiting to die and experiencing existential angst. Both cases show how our looking to painful emotions may suggest areas in which new and better ethical practices are needed, as well as whether, once proposed, providers will adopt them or not.