Profit, Professionalism, and Patient Welfare: Reflections from the Andrew Markus Visiting Scholarship

What role should profit play in medical decision-making? And at what point, if any, does financial motivation become incompatible with professional responsibility in health care? These questions shaped my month at Ethox as an Andrew Markus Visiting Scholar, where I examined the restrictions physicians’ profit and profit motive may pose on patient welfare.

My project asks whether it can ever be ethically acceptable for considerations of physicians’ profit to restrict patient welfare. Empirical findings from my previous research indicate that financial incentives can influence medical decision-making in ways that might risk compromising patients’ welfare. While such effects are often analysed in policy or regulatory terms, they also raise deeper normative questions: what moral status should profit hold in a profession fundamentally oriented towards welfare?

My time at Ethox allowed me to explore these conceptual foundations in greater depth. Drawing on work in business ethics, I examined profit and profit motive not merely as economic mechanisms but as moral concepts. Engaging with theories of transaction and exchange helped me clarify which rights and obligations arise when services are provided within market structures — and whether healthcare, given its vulnerability and asymmetries, demands a distinct ethical framework.

The discussions and feedback I received from the Ethox community were instrumental in refining these arguments. The intellectual culture is marked by both analytical precision and openness to challenge, creating a space in which ideas can be rigorously tested without losing their exploratory character.

As the Scholarship includes a Visiting Fellowship at Green Templeton College, I was also able to engage with Oxford’s wider academic environment. The Management in Medicine programme offered valuable insight into the normative commitments underlying healthcare governance in the United Kingdom. Conversations within the College’s international medical community further highlighted both the shared and context-specific ethical challenges contemporary healthcare systems face.

Oxford itself — balancing tradition with intellectual innovation — provided an ideal setting for sustained reflection. Time spent in its libraries and in conversation with colleagues, both within and beyond formal academic settings, strengthened not only my project but also the collaborative relationships that will continue to shape my work.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been part of the Ethox and Green Templeton College community, and I look forward to continuing the conversations that began there.