For a few reasons, I’ve been thinking a bit over the last few months about professionalism and professional codes. In fact, that’s the topic that’s attracted most of my attention here since… oooh, ages ago. I find the idea of a code of professional ethics troubling in many ways, but also fascinating. And one of […]
Category: clinical ethics
Debate: The Fiction of an Interest in Death? Justice for Charlie Gard
Julian Savulescu Dominic Wilkinson’s Response A judge ruled last week that baby Charlie Gard will have his treatment withdrawn, against the wishes of his parents. His doctors argued that the rare mitochondrial disease (MDDS) he was born with was causing him unbearable suffering. His parents had raised funds to take him to the US […]
Debate Reponse: Charlie Gard, Interests and Justice – an alternative view
Dominic Wilkinson Responding to Julian Savulescu The sad and difficult case of Charlie Gard, which featured in the media last week, is the latest in a series of High Court and Family court cases when parents and doctors have disagreed about medical treatment for a child. Doctors regard the treatment as “futile” or “potentially inappropriate”. […]
Donald Trump’s Mental Health (again)
The speculation about Donald Trump’s mental health that was doing the rounds earlier in the year seems to have died down a bit. That’s to be expected; like it or not, his Presidency is now part of normal life. But I’ve been lagging in my blogging here, and so it’s only now that I’ve got […]
Family Presence During Resuscitation: Extending Ethical Norms from Pediatrics to Adults
Guest Post: Christine Vincent and Zohar Lederman Paper: Family presence during resuscitation: extending ethical norms from paediatrics to adults Family Presence During Resuscitation is an important ethical issue for discussion within the medical community. Currently, family presence is more commonly accepted in paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) than adult CPR. However, we argue that this fact is not morally […]
Aid-in-Dying Laws and the Physician’s Duty to Inform
Guest Post: Mara Buchbinder Paper: Aid-in-dying laws and the physician’s duty to inform Why do so many people assume that any clinical communication about aid-in-dying (AID, also known as assisted suicide), where it is legal, ought to be patient-initiated? Physician participants in my ongoing study tend to assume that physicians should wait for patients to initiate […]
Harm: Could It Sometimes Be a Good Thing?
Guest Post: Patrick Sullivan Response: Hanna Pickard and Steve Pearce, Balancing costs and benefits: a clinical perspective does not support a harm minimization approach for self-injury outside of community settings BBC news recently reported on the approval of plans for facilities to support self-injection rooms to allow drug users to inject safely under supervision in Glasgow. […]
Balancing Costs and Benefits: A Clinical Perspective Does not Support a Harm Minimization Approach for Self-injury Outside of Community Settings
Guest Post: Hanna Pickard and Steve Pearce Responding to: Harm may sometimes be a good thing? Patrick Sullivan Sullivan’s emphasis on the importance of supporting autonomy and independence among vulnerable people who self-injure is fundamental to good clinical practice. This is why some forms of harm minimization, such as encouraging reflection, responsibility, safe cutting and where appropriate […]
Bridging the Education-action Gap: A Near-peer Case-based Undergraduate Ethics Teaching Programme
Guest Post: Dr Selena Knight and Dr Wing May Kong Paper: Bridging the education-action gap – a near-peer case-based undergraduate ethics teaching programme Medical ethics and law is a compulsory part of the UK undergraduate medical school curriculum. By the time they qualify, new junior doctors will have been exposed to ethics teaching in lectures and […]
Professional Codes and Diagnosis at a Distance
This is the second part of my response to Trish Greenhalgh’s post on the propriety of medics, psychiatrists in particular, offering diagnoses of Donald Trump’s mental health. In the last post, I concentrated on some of the problems associated with making such a diagnosis (or, on reflection, what might be better called a “quasi-diagnosis”). In […]