What are the character strengths of a good doctor?

Abstract

In recent years fictional doctors with unappealing character traits have become a trope of television depictions of medical settings: the eponymous Dr House who misanthropy extends to both patients and colleagues. Dr Cox of the hospital-set comedy Scrubs who bitter tirades reduce his subordinates to tears, and the curmudgeonly 'Doc Martin', a rural GP whose gruff demeanour perplexes and offends his patients, to give a few examples. But despite their objectionable behaviour, these characters are simultaneously presented as brilliant doctors whose diagnostic wizardry and cool-head in a medical crisis more than makes up for their lack of a pleasing bedside manner. In reality we are less compromising, and while technical knowledge and clinical competency are of course crucial attributes of the good doctor, we are also concerned with doctors' manner and behaviour - with their character.