Social love in healthcare professionals. Some preliminary reflections on a missing issue

This work explores the topic of social love in professional practice, specifically in healthcare professionals. The understanding and practice of love in professional roles has been overlooked in the existing literature. Therefore, this paper introduces a theoretical critical review and some brief empirical considerations of the meaning of love for healthcare professionals. First, the meaning of this concept in literature will be highlighted in order to clarify which issues are involved in the definition and application of love in caring professionals. Since most studies of this topic have focused on nursing, love in this specific professional context will be discussed. This paper defines the concept of agapic love as ‘social love’ by drawing on previous contributions developed by the author and sociological literature. Finally, social love will be compared with the concept of love through some empirical examples to reflect on the possibilities of developing and encouraging future investigations of social love in healthcare settings.