Ethics is an ever relevant aspect in every field of human activity in general and health care in particular. From the classical times, professional ethical codes and prayers directed the practice and distribution of the medical care. As the society and its institutions have changed since Hippocrates, so did the practice and delivery of health care changed as the current health care concerns inc...

Background: This review focuses on exploring the concept of the nurse-client relationship as it may be informed by relational ethics. Relational ethics is a new approach to ethical practice in health care and can be a framework for nurses and other health professionals in considering how to help patients and families. Purpose: To review the basic elements of relational ethics prior to summarizi...

This commentary introduces critical public health ethics as an innovative lens for considering Canada's role in global health. Arising from the relatively young field of public health ethics, this analytic perspective sheds light on questions regarding public health policy, research and practice that often remain shaded from view because of traditional ways of thinking about public health. The ...

BACKGROUND While health care needs assessments have been conducted among juveniles or adolescents by researchers in developed countries, assessments using an ethics framework particularly in developing countries are lacking. We analysed the health care needs among adolescents at the Nakambala Correctional Institution in Zambia, using the Beauchamp and Childress ethics framework. The ethics appr...

There is frequently an appearance of conflict between medicine and economics. This arises first because the nature of health and health care requires the doctor to make decisions on behalf of the patient and thus serves to explain why medical ethics exist. But secondly it is due to the relative lack of acceptance of the ethics of the common good within medical ethics. As a result while economic...

The focus of healthcare ethics within the framework of ethical principles and philosophical foundations has always, in recent times, been the community, namely, the healthcare provider, the patient or, in research, the study participant. An initiative is thus described whereby a community of practice (CoP) model was developed around health ethics in health research, education and clinical care....

The study of ethics in public health became a societal imperative following the horrors of pre World War II eugenics, the Holocaust, and the Tuskegee Experiment (and more recent similar travesties). International responses led to: the Nuremberg Doctors' Trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CCPCG, 1948...

BACKGROUND The generation of evidence is integral to the work of public health and health service providers. Traditionally, ethics has been addressed differently in research projects, compared with other forms of evidence generation, such as quality improvement, program evaluation, and surveillance, with review of non-research activities falling outside the purview of the research ethics board....