| Developing and manufacturing prescription drugs, like practicing medicine is a moral endeavor that imposes certain moral obligations on the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, pharmaceutical industry executives, like physicians should have high ethical standards. Although industry professionals do not interact directly with patients they do make decisions, manufacture products, and produce advertisements that affect the lives of patients. Consequently, pharmaceutical industry executives should develop skills that demonstrate humanism and professionalism.;The goal of medical humanities is to remind health care professionals they are dealing with people, not as constituents of their ailment, but as whole beings. In this dissertation, I discuss literature, narrative, and bioethics (specifically principle based ethics, virtue ethics, and narrative ethics) as disciplines of medical humanities applied to the pharmaceutical industry to help executives learn about humanism, professionalism, and moral reasoning. In the same manner medical humanities helps physicians cultivate skills of empathy, introspection, and self-reflection, it can also assist executives in learning about morality, right, and wrong. These skills are essential for humane health care.;I argue that professionalism is an outcome of training in medical humanities. Training pharmaceutical executives in medical humanities is not intended to make physicians out of pharmaceutical industry professionals. However, at the very least, executives may benefit from medical humanities instruction because it can help to enhance professional behaviors, such as ethical decision making and other characteristics associated with humanistic attitudes and actions. In order to sustain a long-term commitment to humanism and professionalism, the Board of directors, as corporate governance, must he the first ones trained in medical humanities and all other stakeholders will comply with the same standards. |
