OBJECTIVES To describe and evaluate the priority-setting element of a hospital's strategic planning process. METHODS Qualitative case study and evaluation against the conditions of 'accountability for reasonableness' of a strategic planning process at a large urban university-affiliated hospital. RESULTS The hospital's strategic planning process met the conditions of 'accountability for rea...

Advances in AI techniques and computing platforms have triggered a lively and expanding discourse on ethical decision-making by autonomous agents. Much recent work in AI concentrates on the challenges of moral decision making from a decision-theoretic perspective, and especially the representation of various ethical dilemmas. Such approaches may be useful but in general are not productive becau...

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) provides recommendations to improve the editorial standards and scientific quality of biomedical journals. These recommendations range from uniform technical requirements to more complex and elusive editorial issues including ethical aspects of the scientific process. Recently, registration of clinical trials, conflicts of interest ...

BACKGROUND With the exception of key 'proven successes' in global health, the current regime of global health governance can be understood as transnational and national actors pursuing their own interests under a rational actor model of international cooperation, which fails to provide sufficient justification for an obligation to assist in meeting the health needs of others. An ethical commitm...

Living donor kidney transplantation has developed very heterogeneously worldwide despite excellent results and without taking into account the context of global organ shortage. Such a heterogeneity highlights persistent ethical issues, whereas organ trafficking is emerging as an organized transplant tourism reinforcing the need for strong national legal frameworks. Despite its powerful regulati...

Smith addresses three areas of concern in his evaluation of prison health care in Britain: the ethical dilemmas faced by prison doctors, the isolation of these practitioners from the medical mainstream, and the quality of care rendered to prisoners. He concludes that prison doctors, who are employees of the Home Office rather than the National Health Service, are handicapped by the organizati...

In the previous decade we have seen an increased use of the term “transparency”. Transparency is being considered an indispensable ingredient in social accountability and necessary for preserving and guaranteeing ethical and fair processes. Transparency is related to visibility of information, and without it, the organization and stakeholders will be left in blind states. The growing importance...

This article reconsiders the fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing in light of the challenge of narrow empirics in the form of evidence-based practice. Objections to the dominance of evidence-based practice are reviewed, and the reasons for it are examined. It is argued that it is partially the result of weaknesses in the alternative patterns of ethical, personal, and esthetic knowing, the...

To increase replication and accountability, it is proposed that researchers make audio/video recordings of laboratory protocols using currently available technologies, such as smart-phones. A detailed record of the procedure representing each experimental condition of the study design with simulated participants could then be posted on the internet and made accessible to researchers wanting mor...

Heroin prescription involves the medical provision of heroin in the treatment of heroin addiction. Rudimentary clinical trials on that treatment modality have been carried out and others are currently underway or in development. However, it is questionable whether subjects considered for such trials are mentally competent to consent to them. The problem has not been sufficiently appreciated in ...