In view of a growing interest in argumentative discourse in the context of patient-centered consultation and shared decision making, this article explores the role that argumentation has been attributed in the literature on doctor-patient consultation so far. It studies to what extent theories and concepts of argumentation have been applied by scholars from various fields in order to analyze, u...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether consumer involvement would help to solve some of the ethical problems associated with research into thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke, with its inherent risk of fatal intracranial haemorrhage. DESIGN Quantitative and qualitative research. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS CONSULTATION PHASE: three meetings were held to discuss the planned research, and participa...

Although bioethics societies are developing standards for clinical ethicists and a code of ethics, they have been castigated in this journal as "a moral, if not an ethics, disaster" for not having completed this task. Compared with the development of codes of ethics and educational standards in law and medicine, however, the pace of professionalization in bioethics appears appropriate. Assessed...

In hospitals, ethics consultations and committees were a product of the 1970s in the United States of America (US). The US administration encouraged their development particularly when the influential 1983 report of the President’s Commission for the study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, entitled Deciding to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment, gave a signifi...

This paper presents a case for allocating health care resources so as to maximise Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). Throughout parallels are drawn with the grounds for adopting utilitarianism. QALYs are desirable because they are essential for human flourishing and goal-attainment. In conditions of scarcity the principle of QALY maximisation may involve unequal treatment of different groups ...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the need for hospital clinical ethics committees by studying the frequency with which ethical dilemmas arose, the perceived adequacy of the process of their resolution, and the teaching and training of staff in medical ethics. DESIGN Interviews with individuals and three multidisciplinary teams; questionnaire to randomly selected individuals. SETTING Two major Lond...

This paper presents a review of current literature on ethical theories as they relate to ethical leadership in the virtual business environment (e-ethics) and virtual project leadership. Ethical theories are reviewed in relation to virtual project management, such as participative management, Theory Y, and its relationship to utilitarianism; Kantian ethics, motivation, and trust; communitarian ...

RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES Patient-centred care has been a central part of US and UK health policy for over a decade, but, despite its importance, the policy literature often fails to provide an adequate theoretical justification for why and how we should value it. This omission is problematic because it renders the status, content and appropriate evaluation of patient-centredness unclear. ...

Publication of an account of growth attenuation with high-dose estrogen in a child with profound physical and cognitive disability brought widespread attention to a common and complex issue faced by families caring for similarly affected children, namely, the potentially negative effect of the increasing size of a child on the ability of his or her family to provide independent care, which in t...

Entrepreneurs have been traditionally epitomized as rugged individuals garnering creative forces of innovation and technology. Applying this traditional, limited, and narrow view of entrepreneurship to ethnic firm creation and growth is to ignore or discount core cultural values of the ethnic contexts in which these firms operate. It is no longer possible to depend solely on human capital theor...