Respect comes from the Latin root respicere, which means “to look at closely.” In common parlance it has come to be interpreted as approaching a person, group, idea, or object with regard or esteem.2 It says, “you matter,” “you are worth the trouble.” No matter how extreme our circumstances, we as humans hope that others will not discount our need to be somebody, that we will be sympathetically accompanied through the most difficult and unlikable or threatening aspects of our struggles. And when we rejoice, we hope others will join us in our celebration of accomplishment. In other words, we count on others’ respect for who we are in a very fundamental sense that we all are humans. Many writers who have tried to explain that humans have basic worth agree that we share a common essence, which they term dignity. Even the ancients, in their myths, described this common essence, a theme also explored in virtually all the world’s major religious traditions.³ The essence is often referred to as the inherent dignity of persons to help emphasize that it resides beyond the physical, social, or psychological characteristics that distinguish us from each other.⁴

Inherent dignity is deeply ingrained into the idea of a profession. There have been centuries of attempts to fully explain it, an exploration that continues to this day on the assumption that there is a common thread of humanity that warrants basic regard of a person as such, no matter the variations that distinguishes him or her from others. In your study of this textbook we will help you look for specific expressions of respect through such everyday actions as the tone of your voice when you address a patient, the adaptation of your pace and body language to meet the needs of a child versus an elderly patient, your trustworthy keeping of a patient confidence, your attention to cultural differences, your presence during a crisis, and your willingness to work together with a patient’s family and other professionals to reach his or her personal health-related goal.

In the health care setting your show of respect is a response to the fact that patients are vulnerable in ways that do not exist outside of the health care context but they also remain able to participate in decisions directly (or sometimes through a surrogate voice) that protect meaning in their life. Therefore, if you value respect, you will want to protect patients from exploitation or harm and advocate for them in ways that will be to their benefit. A helpful concept to help you understand the deeper relational dynamics that are taking place in respectful communications is care.

Everyone talks about care as a positive feature of human relationships. It is. But care has a much more serious function in sustaining them than we often acknowledge. It is the link we make with another human being in distress, taking their suffering and well-being into account. Reich associates true caring with what we decide to do in a relationship when the chips are down.6 Often it is not limited to the warm sentimentality so often expressed on the inside of greeting cards. True caring requires us to choose among our priorities and may become a challenge or even a burden. Our lives and energies are expended on what in reality we care about or value, no matter what we may say to the contrary.⁶ This is precisely what distinguishes sentimentality from a motivation to care: Sentimentality stresses the awareness that you feel an emotion which evokes something in you to respond, whereas caring always requires involved concern about the specific barriers to a person’s well-being and the action required to relieve them. We introduce it here because it helps to connect the idea of respect more generally with how our actions are outgrowths of core values we hold and are expressed in our roles as a person, professional, and member of society.