The very title of this chapter signifies an important link between Christian and secular accounts of health care ethics. If ‘care’ is the second of the virtues present within the Synoptic healing stories, it is also a term with wide currency in secular medical contexts today – as in ‘health care’ itself, ‘community care’ and ‘care assistants’. The health care professional is permitted and even expected to risk personal (but not intimate) contact with those who are ill or disabled and has a duty to do everything appropriate to cure them (if possible) or to reduce their pain or discomfort (if not) and, preferably, to eliminate the disease or condition itself. Care, properly understood, involves a range of core personal values, including competence, integrity, responsibility and confidentiality. Total patient care may also involve advocacy on behalf of the vulnerable and non-competent patient, as well as diligence to the common good and global justice.

Care, properly understood, is particularly demanding and highlights the gap between moral demands and human propensity to selfishness. In secular care one method adopted to ensure that adequate care is provided to patients is to produce written codes of professional practice and another is to have regular and systematic audits of actual practice. Using the recent writings of Onora O'Neill, it will be argued in the next chapter that such methods fall short of ensuring care, because care, properly understood, involves a personal relationship between a carer and a (conscious) patient.