OBJECTIVES To report the outcome of applications to 43 research ethics committees. SETTING Four regional health authorities in England. FINDINGS The research ethics committees varied considerably in their practices. The time lapse until notification of the outcome of the approval ranged from just under one week to 23 weeks with a mean of 8.6 weeks. Four research ethics committees failed to ...

Health professionals have wrestled with their ethical guiding principles for millennia. The sonorous oath of Hippocrates (470-410 BC) has echoed through the ages and undergone many revisions to devise an oath of ethics relevant to modern health practice. In some cases, there is no longer an oath, but a booklet or manual to guide the practitioner (1-3). There are specialists in medical ethics, i...

Clinical ethics committees (CECs) are well established in North America where they are known as hospital or health care ethics committees. Similar groups and other kinds of clinical ethics support are now developing in Europe. This supplement to the Journal of Medical Ethics provides an overview of the issues arising from the provision of clinical ethics support services, and clinical ethics co...

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) courses are teaching public health and urban planning students how to assess the likely health effects of proposed policies, plans, and projects. We suggest that public health and urban planning have complimentary frameworks for training practitioners to address the living conditions that affect health. Planning perspectives emphasize practical skills for impactin...

Pharmacists as one of health-care providers face ethical issues in terms of pharmaceutical care, relationship with patients and cooperation with the health-care team. Other than pharmacy, there are pharmaceutical companies in various fields of manufacturing, importing or distributing that have their own ethical issues. Therefore, pharmacy practice is vulnerable to ethical challenges and needs s...

In this paper, the foundations of professional ethics in occupational health care is described and discussed. After an introduction reminding of the global developments of world economy, communications and trade and reference to cultural and social developments, reference is given the four basic ethical criteria of biomedical ethics of beneficence ("doing good"), non-malfeasance (avoidance of h...

Health-care is permeated with ethical values and norms and so there are ethical implications to all interventions which changes practice, and this includes quality improvement (QI). The interest for ethics in QI so far has not had an explicit focus on the ethics of the actual improvement. Contrasting this with health technology assessment (HTA), we there find an almost exclusive interest in the...

Interest in global health is growing among students across many disciplines and fields of study. In response, an increasing number of academic programmes integrate and promote opportunities for international research, service or clinical placements. These activities raise a range of ethical issues and are associated with important training needs for those who participate. In this paper, we focu...

ISSUE ADDRESSED This paper considers the role of ethics and ethics review processes in the development of health promotion quality assurance and evaluation activities involving human participants. CONTENT The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and associated documents provide the framework for the ethical con...