Bericht uit Amphia Ziekenhuis

Abstract

The COVID­-19 crisis has confronted us once again with the question of good care. Philosophers have given us ideas about good care. Good care is maintaining the world as a place of good life (Tronto). But good care is also a practice participating in that good life itself (MacIntyre). This article seeks the answer to the question in a journalistic observation of the practice itself. This observation, a series of portraits of healthcare workers in a hospital during the first wave of the crisis, is subjected to narrative analysis. The analysis shows that the narrative of journalistic observation makes visible the healthcare values versus other competing values. The hospital crisis has placed healthcare practice in a dual narrativity: that of struggle – the hospital as a ‘battlefield’ – and that of care. The core value, however, is that of connection. The answer to the question of good care corresponds to the ideas of the philosophers, but fills them out further and shows how and where good care is realized in practice.