By Brianne Helfrich Pediatric healthcare is different — parental involvement in decision-making, the heightened pressure to “save a child”, and the emerging voices of pediatric patients make this field uniquely challenging. From an ethics perspective, these cases can be complex and emotionally charged. Clinicians often delicately balance the wishes of the families, patients and organizational […]
Category: Consultation
Clinical ethics: looking backwards, thinking forwards
By R Mohindra, S Louw Our paper is primarily an audit of the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Clinical Ethics Advisory Group (CEAG). But it has several threads including: The nature of the workflow for the clinical ethics committee including volume and complexity over time; The impact of the relatively recent changes, including principles of approach, […]
Making visible the invisible elements of clinical ethics consultation
By Clare Delany, Sharon Feldman, Barbara Kameniar, and Lynn Gillam. In our article, ‘Making clinical ethics facilitation visible and accessible: Seven steps of the Critical Dialogue method of Ethics Consultation’, we detail our method of clinical ethics facilitation, broken down into seven steps. We also share the rationale for the various steps, and provide concrete […]
How do Medical Students Learn Ethics?
Guest Post by Carolyn Johnston How interested are medical students in learning ethics and law? I have met students who have a genuine interest in the issues, who are engaged in teaching sessions and may go on to intercalate in ethics and law. On the other hand some consider that ethics is “just common sense”. […]
Mitochondrial Disease and the HFEA
Readers are probably aware of the consultation that the HFEA launched this week on the use of mitochondrial replacement to prevent certain illnesses. John Harris has a piece on it in The Guardian – and by gosh golly, he’s right*; the article is well worth a quick look. My own ha’p’orth: some of the stuff in the […]
Organs and Payment: cui bono?
Dipping in and out of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ recent report on organ donation (available in various forms from this page), I’ve been struck by a couple of things. One is that the Council is painfully keen to maintain its distance from the idea that organs – especially those from live donors – could […]
Consultation: Emerging Biotechnologies
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has announced that it has opened a consultation on emerging biotechnologies: The Council is seeking views on the ethical issues posed by emerging biotechnologies. Your views will be valuable in shaping and informing the deliberations of a Working Party that was recently set up to consider this topic. The Working Party […]
Consent and Consensus
For the past week, the news in the UK has been all about coalitions, compromise, consensus and that sort of thing. The hung Parliament has been heralded as ushering in a new era of politics-by-agreement, rather than by the traditional Westminster model of simply flattening everyone else. And a lot of people seem to think […]
When the Witch Asks a Question, I Can’t Resist
In the replies to this thread, The Witch Doctor asks this: A Scenario: Apparently there are some sites on the web just now claiming that the world is going to end in 2012. Some teenagers are becoming agitated. I don’t want to be around when the world ends, so I’m going to drink some poison […]
What should UK medical students learn about ethics? Your chance to have your say
The Institute of Medical Ethics is currently revising the Core Curriculum in Medical Ethics and Law. This is arguably the only document laying out in any kind of detail what medical students in the UK should learn about ethics in medical school, and is therefore not unimportant! A consultation on the revision in now open […]