Slow Ethics and the Art of Care

'This book offers considerable insight into how health care might be delivered in the current challenging climate and leads the way in developing a new approach to delivering health care.' -- Leslie Gelling, Editor of the Journal of Clinical Nursing and Principal Academic in Adult Nursing, Bournemouth University, UK
'In this meditation on the nature of "slow ethics," Gallagher considers morally exemplary as well as morally deficient acts to make the case for slow ethics, which places "sensitivity, solidarity, space, sustainability, scholarship and stories" at its centre. We need, Gallagher argues, to slow down to practice care in an ethical way. Most remarkably, the book is itself a beautiful and personal illustration of how "slow ethics" can work to change how we care and, indeed, how we live.' -- Joan Claire Tronto, Professor Emerita, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota
'Ann Gallagher is one of the leading international voices in care ethics. In Slow Ethics and the Art of Care, she draws on nearly four decades of experience, observation and scholarship to explore the real ethical choices facing all those who try to care well. This is a wise and deeply humane book that should be read by everyone who’s serious about one of the most urgent human challenges we face.' -- Christina Patterson, journalist and author of The Art of Not Falling Apart, UK
'Population-level challenges from the coronavirus pandemic to ageing and dementia call on us to consider what it means to live a good life, how we should live in relation to each other, and who counts as a member of society. Care ethics offers a crucial way to understand how lives are linked through interdependence. Ann Gallagher's Slow Ethics is both a thoughtful meditation on the nature of care and a practical guide to thinking and doing in uncertain times. This new work will be welcomed by scholars of care ethics and practitioners in care fields and will be of interest to general readers.' -- Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center, USA
'Health care is notoriously fast paced. Health care providers decry how busy they are in their professional lives and lament the lack of time for reflection. Professor Ann Gallagher provides an antidote to this situation in her book Slow Ethics and the Art of Care. Drawing on her extensive experience in nursing and ethics, she persuasively guides the reader to the inescapable conclusion that slowness is a necessity, not a luxury in the provision of health care. Beautifully written and lucidly argued, it should be savoured slowly and ideally with a cup of tea!' -- Ross Upshur, Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Canada
'Delightful scholarship and deep humanity make this book a rare treasure. It will become a classic, to be read and pondered…slowly.' -- Christopher Herbert, Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics, University of Surrey, UK
'Ann Gallagher has written a wonderful "bible" of slow ethics for all the care professions. Lively, accessible and incredibly moving, its lessons are profoundly relevant to the changing world we find ourselves in. Every hospital, every care agency and every funding body should have this book in their library – and put its lessons into practice.' -- Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Surrey, UK
‘…[a] powerful and polemical new treatise on ethics and care… Slow Ethics and the Art of Care is an important contribution to academic scholarship on caregiving. It challenges many preconceptions we have about work in the ‘helping professions’, and provides a vast range of conceptual apparatus to try to diagnose the current issues that societies face in providing good care and to clarify how we might reinvoke the idea of ‘virtuous caregiving’… By clarifying so elegantly what is means to be a good caregiver, we are better placed to think further about what is required in the practice of care: how to communicate well, how to make correct clinical or health care judgements, and how to address practical ethical problems.’ -- Michael Dunn * Ethics and Social Welfare *