Moving past phronesis: clinical reasoning in person-centered care

Abstract

Phronesis has been a popular concept among those attempting to categorize and understand the kind of reasoning that doctor’s employ in the clinic. However, this paper argues that it is not the best possible concept for understanding the kind of reasoning necessary for person-centred care. First, it attends to what is lacking in that concept, and then it proposes an alternative (the concept of effectual reasoning) to demonstrate the potential for a better understanding of clinical reasoning as both open-ended and strategic. That approach is better than phronesis because it allows us to address both relational aspects of autonomy, and the need to center all persons, as such, including healthcare practitioners as well as patients, in healthcare.