Reflections on Critical Values

Critical Reflections on Regulation

What values are critical?

Chemistry and hematology laboratories long ago developed policies and procedures for so-called " critical values. " These policies ensured timely verbal communications for pre-defined test results understood to reflect life-threatening therapeutically remediable conditions. The critical values concept has penetrated anatomic pathology but only in specific limited settings, usually when an abnor...

Effective Environmental Assessment Tools - critical reflections on concepts and practice

This article discusses the conceptual basis of the research in the MiSt-programme looking especially at the concept of tools and a simple model for the interaction of tools with their context of application and implicit background factors.

A Critical Assessment of Simulated Critical Values

There is a wide variety of statistical problems (e.g., unit root and cointegration tests) where hypothesis testing involves the use of simulated rather than theoretical critical values. We argue that in practice the number of replications used to simulate critical values is often insufficient to provide the degree of precision that is implied. In particular, the number of replications needed is...

Critical reflections on the principle of beneficence in biomedicine

Medical ethics as a scholarly discipline and a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, anthropology and sociology. As such there are a number of values in medical ethics such as autonomy, non-maleficence, confidentiality, dignity, honest...