Journal of medical ethics
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Journal of medical ethics · Nov 2010
The role of doctors' religious faith and ethnicity in taking ethically controversial decisions during end-of-life care.
The prevalence of religious faith among doctors and its relationship with decision-making in end-of-life care is not well documented. The impact of ethnic differences on this is also poorly understood. This study compares ethnicity and religious faith in the medical and general UK populations, and reports on their associations with ethically controversial decisions taken when providing care to dying patients. ⋯ Greater acknowledgement of the relationship of doctors' values with clinical decision-making is advocated.
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Journal of medical ethics · Nov 2010
Students come to medical schools prepared to cheat: a multi-campus investigation.
To investigate high school cheating experiences and attitudes towards academic misconduct of freshmen at all four medical schools in Croatia, as a post-communist country in transition, with intention of raising awareness of academic (dis)honesty. ⋯ Academic dishonesty of university students does not begin in higher education; students come to medical schools ready to cheat.
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2010
Ethical issues surrounding do not attempt resuscitation orders: decisions, discussions and deleterious effects.
Since their introduction as 'no code' in the 1980s and their later formalization to 'do not resuscitate' orders, such directions to withhold potentially life-extending treatments have been accompanied by multiple ethical issues. The arguments for when and why to instigate such orders are explored, including a consideration of the concept of futility, allocation of healthcare resources, and reaching a balance between quality of life and quality of death. The merits and perils of discussing such decisions with patients and/or their relatives are reviewed and the unintended implications of 'do not attempt resuscitation' orders are examined. Finally, the paper explores some alternative methods to approaching the resuscitation decision, and calls for empirical evaluation of such methods that may reduce the ethical dilemmas physicians currently face.
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Ethical issues are of foremost importance in modern bio-medical science. Ethical guidelines and socio-cultural public awareness exist for modern samples, whereas for ancient mummy studies both are de facto lacking. This is particularly striking considering the fact that examinations are done without informed consent or that the investigations are invasive due to technological aspects and that it affects personality traits. ⋯ Our broad discussion of the moral dilemma of mummy research should help to extract relevant decision-making criteria for any such study in future. We specifically do not make any recommendations about how to rate these decision-factors, since this is highly dependent on temporal and cultural affiliations of the involved researcher. The sustainability of modern mummy research is dependent on ethical orientation, which can only be given and eventually settled in an interdisciplinary approach such as the one we attempt to present here.
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Journal of medical ethics · Oct 2010
Authorisation, altruism and compulsion in the organ donation debate.
The report from the Organ Donation Taskforce looking at the potential impact of an opt-out system for deceased donor organ donation in the UK, published in November 2008, is probably the most comprehensive and systematic inquiry to date into the issues and considerations which might affect the availability of deceased donor organs for clinical transplantation. By the end of a thorough and transparent process, a clear consensus was reached. The taskforce rejected the idea of an opt-out system. In this article we acknowledge the life saving potential of organ transplants and seek to highlight the difficulties that arise when the issue of organ shortage competes with concerns over choice and authorisation in the context of deceased donor organ donation.