general injunction to become a better person by improving our character. Improving our
character also allows us to develop appropriate ways to respond to the hurt that others
cause us so that we do not become isolated.
Dealing with hurt then means that when we attempt to make reparation to those we have
hurt, we accept responsibility for inflicting that hurt and acknowledge that we may need
to work hard to restore trust (and sometimes expect to suffer hurt ourselves in the
process). Nevertheless, while it might be appropriate in general to aim for sustaining
connection when dealing with hurt in relationships, Potter seems not to acknowledge
that it is likely that there will be occasions when sustaining connections in both
professional and personal relationships will impede rather than enable flourishing.
Recognising when attempts to sustain connections no longer contribute to human
flourishing is surely a necessary со-requirement of dealing with hurt in relationships;
although professional accountability may well preclude abandoning connection in many
professional relationships.
vi) That our institutions and governing bodies be virtuous
The betrayal of trust in Potter’s case study (see requirement iv above) takes place during
a crisis intervention and once the services of the crisis centre are no longer required,
further contact with the client is not possible. This means that in this instance the health
care worker who betrayed the trust placed in her is unable to take any steps to repair the
broken trust. This leads Potter to conclude that full trustworthiness requires suitable
institutional arrangements and these will be found most often in the virtuous institution.
A point made forcefully by MacIntyre (1985) who notes the modem tension between
practices and institutions; and that while the virtues may flourish within practices,
because practices depend for their survival on institutions, it is the institutions that will
determine the extent to which the virtues can flourish within practices. A virtuous
institution is one in which individuals are encouraged to cultivate the virtues and to act
in virtuous ways. To put this another way, if it is believed that practitioners should act
virtuously then institutional arrangements must reduce tensions of the sort described
earlier and in requirement vii (below).
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