By Rosamond Rhodes When I first began my work at Mount Sinai, I was the sole philosopher at the institution, and I certainly felt like a stranger among the hundreds of medical professionals. As the only bioethicist on campus, I was called upon by any department that wanted ethics education for their trainees and any […]
Category: clinical ethics
Public Reason and Physicians’ Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse
By Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard We recently offered a reply to criticisms of our view that physicians should refrain from deliberating with their patients on religious grounds when helping them make medical decisions. Part of what prompted our research into this topic is recent work discussing appropriate ways of communicating with religious patients who […]
The irrelevance and elusiveness of consciousness
By Charles Foster I am aware (as my academic critics will agree) of only a tiny proportion of what I do and what I am. It is not clear what sort of creature I am, but what is clear is that very little of me is visible to myself – let alone to others. We […]
Unrepresented Patients and Medical Error: Disclosure and Apology
By Arjun S. Byju and Kajsa A. Mayo What should a clinical team do when an error occurs in the care of a patient who lacks both capacity and a surrogate, to whom an expression of contrition could otherwise be offered? This vexing question served as the initial impetus for our paper. As medical students, […]
Moral exploitation and junior doctors
By Joshua Parker. Medicine’s power to affect human well-being explains why the nature of doctors’ practice is deeply moral. With almost every medical decision having some moral component, doctors’ work carries a number of moral burdens. Aside from the decision-making itself, which of course can be very difficult and the risk of error consequential, there […]
The ethics of disposing of amputated limbs
By Esmée Hanna and Glenn Robert Whilst ethical issues relating to the disposal of body parts generally are increasingly discussed (largely prompted by high profile organ retention scandals), what happens in the specific case of amputated limbs has not received much attention. Amputation is however increasingly common, in part due to growing rates of diabetes […]
Puberty-blocking drugs: the difficulties of conducting ethical research
The ethics of research trials for young people with gender dysphoria are complicated.Billion Photos/Shutterstock Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford and Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford A recent Newsnight programme reported that a major UK puberty-blocking trial is under investigation. Doctors at a London clinic provided drugs to block the development of puberty in young adolescents […]
Can Rationing Ethics Foster Access to Scarce Specialists?
By Andrew Hantel, Gregory Abel, Mark Siegler Few people would consider rationing to be a positive concept. When confronted with restricted access to something we want or need, we inevitably react with negative feelings. Such a reaction belies the overall concept of allocating a scare resource and distracts from the good that can come from […]
‘Was this on the consent form?’ Can you really consent in a one-off conversation to interventions with uncertain and evolving consequences?
By Rachel Horton, Benjamin Bell, Angela Fenwick, Anneke Lucassen A child conceived with a donated egg has multiple health problems but no unifying diagnosis. Given that testing of biological parents may help make a genetic diagnosis in a child, is it OK to contact the child’s anonymous egg donor to ask if they would provide […]
It is time the law stopped incentivising confidentiality: bringing duties of care more in line with professional guidance
By Michael Fay and Edward Dove ABC v St George’s Healthcare (2017) is an important legal decision, and its return to court in November 2019 will be no less significant for doctors’ duties of care. Currently, a doctor is subject to a duty of care to their patient. A doctor also has a corresponding duty […]