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PubMed1995

Clinical ethics and nursing: "yes" to caring, but "no" to a female ethics of care.

According to a contemporary school of thought there is a specific female approach to ethics which is based not on abstract "male" ethical principles or rules, but on "care". Nurses have taken a keen interest in these female approaches to ethics. Drawing on the views expounded by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, nurses claim that a female "ethics of care" better captures their moral experiences than a traditional male "ethics of justice". This paper argues that "care" is best understood in a dispositional sense, that is, as sensitivity and responsiveness to the particularities of a situation and the needs of "concrete" others. While "care", in this sense, is necessary for ethics, it is not sufficient. Ethics needs "justice" as well as "care". If women and nurses excessively devalue principles and norms, they will be left without the theoretical tools to condemn some actions or practices, and to defend others. They will, like generations of nurses before them, be condemned to silence.

Empathy↗
PubMed2005

Project examining effectiveness in clinical ethics (PEECE): phase 1-- descriptive analysis of nine clinical ethics services.

OBJECTIVE: The field of clinical ethics is relatively new and expanding. Best practices in clinical ethics against which one can benchmark performance have not been clearly articulated. The first step in developing benchmarks of clinical ethics services is to identify and understand current practices. DESIGN AND SETTING: Using a retrospective case study approach, the structure, activities, and resources of nine clinical ethics services in a large metropolitan centre are described, compared, and contrasted. RESULTS: The data yielded a unique and detailed account of the nature and scope of clinical ethics services across a spectrum of facilities. General themes emerged in four areas-variability, visibility, accountability, and complexity. There was a high degree of variability in the structures, activities, and resources across the clinical ethics services. Increasing visibility was identified as a significant challenge within organisations and externally. Although each service had a formal system for maintaining accountability and measuring performance, differences in the type, frequency, and content of reporting impacted service delivery. One of the most salient findings was the complexity inherent in the provision of clinical ethics services, which requires of clinical ethicists a broad and varied skill set and knowledge base. Benchmarks including the average number of consults/ethicist per year and the hospital beds/ethicist ratio are presented. CONCLUSION: The findings will be of interest to clinical ethicists locally, nationally, and internationally as they provide a preliminary framework from which further benchmarking measures and best practices in clinical ethics can be identified, developed, and evaluated.

Benchmarking↗
PubMed2004

Ethics education and value prioritization among members of U.S. hospital ethics committees.

Calls for ethics education for members of hospital ethics committees presume that the effects and benefits of such education are well-established. This is not the case. A review of the literature reveals that studies consistently have failed to uncover any significant effect of ethics education on the moral reasoning, moral competency, and/or moral development of medical professionals. The present paper discuss this negative result and describes the author's national study of the value priorities of members of hospital ethics committees. This study discovered correlations between moral decision making and factors like age and type of institution where the committee operates. The results of this study also resemble those of previous studies in finding no correlation between ethics education and moral decision making. The author concludes that there is a need for more research on the effects of nonmoral personal, societal, and institutional factors on the moral reasoning of members of hospital ethics committees. Further, in the absence of any firm empirical basis, calls for ethics education for medical professionals and ethics committee members should be rethought.

Bioethical Issues↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The basic nature of ethical problems experienced by persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: implications for nursing ethics education and practice.

The purpose of this research was to describe and examine the basic nature of ethical problems that are experienced by persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The participants were 25 persons with AIDS and 5 significant persons, not infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, who provided contextual understanding. The conceptual framework and method combined ethical inquiry and phenomenology. During an in-depth audiotaped interview, each participant answered the question, "What situation involving AIDS has caused you the most conflict about the right thing to do?" To assure scientific adequacy, the participant validated the analysis of the first interview in a second interview 2 weeks later, and five experts and two independent judges validated the combined analyses. From 117 ethical problems emerged a basic nature consisting of (1) conflict of values about what to believe, who to be, and what to do; (2) resolutions based on intuitive beliefs, desire to be a good person, and rational choice; and (3) rationale revolving around a desire for integrity and meaning. The findings suggest strategies for improving nursing ethics education and, ultimately, nursing practice: (1) base content on ethics research and philosophical analysis, (2) address real-life ethical problems, (3) discuss virtue ethics in addition to principled thinking and ethical caring, and (4) teach ethical listening.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed2004

Argument-based medical ethics: a formal tool for critically appraising the normative medical ethics literature.

Although there are critical appraisal tools for other genres of the medical literature, there currently is no formal tool for physicians to use in their critical appraisal of the normative medical ethics literature. We present a formal assessment tool for the critical appraisal of the normative medical ethics literature that incorporates the intellectual standards of argument-based medical ethics and evidence-based medicine. We draw on the intellectual standards of argument-based ethics, ethical analysis and argument, and the literature on evidence-based medicine. The tool involves 4 questions about normative medical ethics papers: (1) Does the article address a focused ethics question? (2) Are the arguments that support the results of the article valid? (3) What are the results? (4) Will the results help me in clinical practice? Obstetrician-gynecologists can use this tool to appraise the normative literature of ethics in obstetrics and gynecology formally.

Ethical Analysis↗
PubMed2002

Two concepts of medical ethics and their implications for medical ethics education.

People who discuss medical ethics or bioethics come to very different conclusions about the levels of agreement in the field and the implications of consensus among health care professionals. In this paper I argue that these disagreements turn on a confusion of two distinct senses of medical ethics. I differentiate (1) medical ethics as a subject in applied ethics from (2) medical ethics as the professional moral commitments of health care professions. I then use the distinction to explain its significant implications for medical ethics education. Drawing on the recent work of John Rawls, I also show the centrality of philosophy in medical ethics by illustrating how contemporary philosophy can be used to construct an ethical framework for the medical professions.

Bioethics↗
PubMed2001

Clinical ethics support services in the UK: an investigation of the current provision of ethics support to health professionals in the UK.

OBJECTIVE: To identify and describe the current state of clinical ethics support services in the UK. DESIGN: A series of questionnaire surveys of key individuals in National Health Service (NHS) trusts, health authorities, health boards, local research ethics committees and health professional organisations. Interviews with chairmen/women of clinical ethics committees identified in the surveys. SETTING: The UK National Health Service. RESULTS: Responses to the questionnaires were received from all but one NHS trust and all but one health authority/board. A variety of models of clinical ethics support were identified including twenty formal clinical ethics committees (CECs). A further twenty NHS trusts expressed an intention to establish a CEC within the next twelve months. Most CECs in the UK have been in existence less than five years and are still defining their role. The chairmen identified education of committee members and contact with other ethics committees as important requirements for committee development. Problems were identified around lack of support for the committee and with raising the profile of the committee within the institution. There has been little evaluation of clinical ethics support services either in the UK or in other countries with longer established services. What evaluation has occurred has focused on process rather than outcome measures. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical ethics support services are developing in the UK. A number of issues have been identified that need to be addressed if such support services are to develop effectively.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2000

Addressing ethical issues in geriatrics and long-term care: ethics education at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

An innovative program in ethics education exists at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. This program can serve as a helpful model for long-term care and geriatric care facilities seeking to implement formal training programs in bioethics. Various aspects of the ethics education program are examined. In addition to describing the role of the ethics committee and research ethics board, consideration is given to case consultations, ethics rounds, the training of junior physicians and medical students, grand rounds and the planning of conferences and guest lectures. With regard to educational content in bioethics, health law, professional guidelines and the principlist approach of Beauchamp and Childress are used to explore the ethical dimensions of particular cases. Given the clinical context of the educational initiatives, the pedagogical approach is predominately case-based. While the bioethics literature emphasizes the patient-physician relationship, ethics education at Baycrest recognizes the importance of multiple professions. Physicians, nurses, social workers, speech pathologists, nutritionists and other health care providers are involved in ethical deliberation and education.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

AIDS and the ethics of medical care and treatment. Institute of Medical Ethics Working Party on the Ethical Implications of AIDS.

HIV infection and AIDS have accelerated a trend from paternalism to partnership in relationships between clinicians and patients. Partnership is based on respect for autonomy and is expressed through open dialogue; its moral aims are summed up in the concept of mutual empowerment. This has practical implications for clinical care and treatment, which are discussed here with particular reference to mental impairment or incapacity, unhelpful, harmful or unorthodox therapies, and discontinuing life-prolonging treatment.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1995

Teaching clinical ethics as a professional skill: bridging the gap between knowledge about ethics and its use in clinical practice.

Ethical reasoning and decision-making may be thought of as 'professional skills', and in this sense are as relevant to efficient clinical practice as the biomedical and clinical sciences are to the diagnosis of a patient's problem. Despite this, however, undergraduate medical programmes in ethics tend to focus on the teaching of bioethical theories, concepts and/or prominent ethical issues such as IVF and euthanasia, rather than the use of such ethics knowledge (theories, principles, concepts, rules) to clinical practice. Not surprisingly, many students and clinicians experience considerable difficulty in using what they know about ethics to help them make competent ethical decisions in their day-to-day clinical practice. This paper describes the development of a seminar programme for teaching senior medical students a more systematic approach to ethical reasoning and analysis and clinical decision-making.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1999

Is etiquette relevant to medical ethics? Ethics and aesthetics in the works of John Gregory (1724-1773).

The writings of the Scottish physician and philosopher John Gregory play an important role in the modern codification of medical ethics. It is therefore appropriate to use his work as a historical example in approaching the question how elements of aesthetics were incorporated in 18th century medical ethics. The concept of a "Gentleman" is pivotal to the entire medical ethics of John Gregory as it provides him with the ethical source of the duty to patients. Gregory makes the trustworthiness of the physician a central point of his medical ethics, and it is in this context that Gregory declares good manners as an essential moral quality of a physician. This paper delineates how good manners are ethically justified in Gregory's medical ethics and concludes with an exploration of the importance of Gregory's conception for present day reflection on the inherence of aesthetics in ethical determinations.

Esthetics↗
PubMed2004

Empirical ethics in action: lessons from two empirical studies in nursing ethics.

Despite the burgeoning of publications in nursing ethics, only more recently has empirical evidence on nursing ethics been published. How nursing ethics can be empirically studied as well as enriched by empirical data will be the focus of this paper. Two empirical studies will be briefly presented and their contribution to ethics discussed. The first one is a quantitative research project about nurses' ethical behavior in daily practice. Using an adapted version of Kohlberg's theory of moral development, this study tried to describe and explore nurses' responses to ethical dilemmas in daily nursing practice. The second study attempted to describe the specificity of residential palliative care. A qualitative approach was used to explore and describe the processes that take place on an inpatient palliative care unit, and the experiences of patients, relatives and palliative care team members. The analysis of the value of both research projects for ethics underlines the power of empirical understanding in the relationship between research and ethics. The need for integration of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies is argued.

Cultural Diversity↗