Journal of medical ethics
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2005
ReviewJust allocation and team loyalty: a new virtue ethic for emergency medicine.
When traditional virtue ethics is applied to clinical medicine, it often claims as its goal the good of the individual patient, and focuses on the dyadic relationship between one physician and one patient. An alternative model of virtue ethics, more appropriate to the practice of emergency medicine, will be outlined by this paper. This alternative model is based on the assumption that the appropriate goal of the practice of emergency medicine is a team approach to the medical wellbeing of individual patients, constrained by the wellbeing of the patient population served by a particular emergency department. By defining boundaries and using the key virtues of justice and team loyalty, this model fits emergency practice well and gives care givers the conceptual clarity to apply this model to various conflicts both within the department and with those outside the department.
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2005
Stroke patients' preferences and values about emergency research.
In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration waiver of informed consent permits certain emergency research only if community consultation occurs. However, uncertainty exists regarding how to define the community(ies) or their representatives. ⋯ This study is the first to identify the values and concerns of individuals most directly affected by stroke emergency research. Further interviews and focus groups are needed to develop and test a validated questionnaire on the preferences and values surrounding emergency research for stroke.
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2005
Practical virtue ethics: healthcare whistleblowing and portable digital technology.
Medical school curricula and postgraduate education programmes expend considerable resources teaching medical ethics. Simultaneously, whistleblowers' agitation continues, at great personal cost, to prompt major intrainstitutional and public inquiries that reveal problems with the application of medical ethics at particular clinical "coalfaces". Virtue ethics, emphasising techniques promoting an agent's character and instructing their conscience, has become a significant mode of discourse in modern medical ethics. ⋯ Finally, it is proposed that a virtue based ethos of medical professionalism, exhibiting transparency and sincerity with regard to achieving uniform quality and safety of health care, may be facilitated by introducing a technological imperative using portable computing devices. Their use by trainees, focused on ethical competence, provides the practical face of virtue ethics in medical education and practice. Indeed, it assists in transforming the professional conscience of whistleblowing into a practical, virtue based culture of self reporting and personal development.
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2005
Authorship ignorance: views of researchers in French clinical settings.
To assess the knowledge and behaviour of researchers regarding criteria for authorship, and the practices of ghost and gift authorship. ⋯ The ICMJE criteria were ignored by clinicians at a university hospital. Ghost and gift authorship were frequent among them. There is a need for French guidelines for authorship to be prepared and implemented.