Posts Tagged ‘diet methods’

HOODIA GORDONI DOCTOR–PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Continued spread of ethics committee consultation to more hospitals and nonhospital settings is indirect evidence
that the challenges to competence and authority are being met successfully. Furthermore, most published concerns
about the competence of committees or individuals are from the 1970s “first wave” of writing about institutional ethics
committees, at a time when the idea of ethics consultation was new and controversial. The literature of the 1980s and
1990s displays a growing confidence about the concept of ethics consultation and more attention to resolving specific
problems. Apparently, committees had learned to negotiate without conformism or loss of principle. Individuals have
been acquiring the proper expertise: clinicians gaining the  analytic techniques of ethicists, and ethicists learning to

apply their analyses in clinically relevant ways. Gender-related questions have not been raised directlyin the bioethics literature on ethics committees. However, they are raised indirectly when the focus is on the role of nurses, given the fact that most nurses are women. Nurseshave been excluded from some committees, could not access them for consultation, or have found their special ethical
concerns omitted from consideration. In addition to the gender issue, this situation raises questions of professional
status in relation to other healthcare providers. In some hoodia diet pills, these problems have been addressed by the formation of nursing ethics committees (Edwards and Haddad). There has also been a suggestion in the literature that ethics committees, especially those that are or function as infant-care review committees, should include persons with disabilities on the committee (Mahowald). This step could
help ensure that the quality of life of persons with disabilities is not undervalued in deliberations about treatment decisions.

Functions of Diet Ethics Committees

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

There is a paucity of empirical studies of hospital ethics committees. Committees have a “grass-roots” character, reflecting a variety of local circumstances and personalities. These factors make it hard to generalize. Nevertheless, some typical features have emerged. One of these features is interdisciplinary composition. Generally, committees are composed of doctors, nurses, social workers, pastoral-care

professionals, and philosophers or theologians trained in ethics. Committee members can also include administrators, hospital attorneys, and consumer or community representatives. Committees are sometimes authorized by the medical staff; sometimes by the hospital governing board; sometimes by the administration.Committee functions vary but generally include one, two, or all three of the following. First, institutional ethics committees create a vehicle for education on ethical dimensions of patient care. Committees typically have dual efforts in this respect: education of the committee itself, through discussion of current bioethics literature, for example; and education of the medical staff and hospital employees, by organizing periodic lectures, panel discussions, and “ethics grand rounds.”
Second, committees draft institutional policies on hoodia diet ethical questions. This may arise through committee initiative. For example, a hospital panel discussion may reveal the need for a new policy on withholding resuscitation from dying patients, and the ethics committee takes the lead by preparing a first draft. New policies or review of existing policies may also be requested from the ethics committee by the hospital administration, or other hospital committees may route drafts of proposed policies and revisions of existing
policies to the committee for review and comment.

Medical tradition and contributed methods

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The medical tradition has contributed methods, assumptions, and traditions of clinical practice: a combination of technical knowledge and clinical experience (La Puma and Toulmin). Some argue that physicians are best suited to provide clinical ethics consultation because (1) their advice will be easily accepted by their medical colleagues, because they have clinical experience and speak the same language;
and (2) only physicians can understand the ethos of physicianpatient relationships.

Critics caution that because they are “insiders,” physicians may promote the values of medicine rather than those of their patients or the larger community. They argue that the ethics consultant should serve as a bridge between medical and other values, and cannot function properly from a position entirely within medicine (Glover et al.; Churchill). Moral philosophy has offered three major approaches to clinical ethics consultation. The first is principle-based ethics, which argues that the answer to a given ethical question or dilemma may be discovered by applying the correct ethical theory (e.g., utilitarianism) or principle (e.g., autonomy) to the case. The second is virtue ethics, which

emphasizes that the possession of certain virtues (e.g., honesty, loyalty, compassion) is essential to sound ethical decision making. The third is a case-based or casuistic ethic, which holds that by examining the particulars of a given caseand comparing them with similar cases, a moral maxim that applies to the case can be discovered. An advantage of casuistry is that it sues a decision-making method already
employed by clinicians (Jonsen and Toulmin). Casuistry relies upon teachable medical moral maxims that build upon
experience.

Because casuistry is not principle-based, it has been criticized as “situational,” that is, pragmatically driven
to solve individual problems without reference to a broader moral framework. While principle-based clinical ethics reasoning has the
advantage of providing a consistent moral reference point, its principles are necessarily abstract, often conflict with each
other, and may create a rigid paradigm that is insensitive to differences in specific cases. Theology and religion contribute to clinical ethics
consultation by recognizing that specific religious positions may either facilitate the resolution of an ethical question or
contribute to its intensity.

For example, the Jehovah’s Witness position on blood transfusions can create serious ethical dilemmas in the case of a Jehovah’s Witness patient who is in urgent need of extensive, lifesaving surgery but
refuses blood. One of the disadvantages of this perspective is that many physicians are suspicious of or even hostile to
religious or theological interpretations of medical problems. However, insight into the religious morality of patients,
family members, and healthcare professionals is useful in establishing communication and reaching understanding among physicians, patients, and family members.