ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the significance and usefulness of philosophical tools and deliberation to health humanities and to health care. It argues that philosophical reflection and deliberation is core to any medical decision-making process and is thus a critical tool for medicine and health care. The chapter outlines some of the major questions asked within medicine, showing that these questions are philosophical in nature and can be valuable assisted by philosophical concepts, tools, and skills. The chapter then describes in more detail one such tool, a philosophical patient toolkit. The chapter also explains that questions about value and meaning are necessarily part of a process of illness, and therefore philosophy is a useful companion to health care, and a core field of health humanities.
