Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

To die well: the phenomenology of suffering and end of life ethics
AbstractThe paper presents an account of suffering as a multi-level phenomenon based on concepts such as mood, being-in-the-world and core life value. This phenomenological account will better allow us to evaluate the hardships associated with dying and thereby assist health care professionals in helping persons to die in the best possible manner. Suffering consists not only in physical pain but in being unable to do basic things that are considered to bestow meaning on one ’s life. The suffering can also be related to no longer being able to be the person one wants to be in the eyes of others, to losing one’s dignity ...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - August 27, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Suffering-based medicine: practicing scientific medicine with a humanistic approach
AbstractSuffering, defined as a state of undergoing pain, distress or hardship, is a multidimensional concept; it can entail physical, psychological and spiritual distress that prompts the sufferer to seek medical attention. As a construct originating from and unique to each patient, no patient ’s suffering is equal to another’s or completely reducible to any generalizable frame of understanding. As it happens in a common medical encounter, the suffering patient requires an anamnesis provided by attentive and comprehensive listening to both the said and unsaid parts of his or her disco urse interpreted through the herm...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - August 19, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The problem with reproductive freedom. Procreation beyond procreators ’ interests
AbstractReproductive freedom plays a pivotal role in debates on the ethics of procreation. This moral principle protects people ’s interests in procreative matters and allows them discretion over whether to have children, the number of children they have and, to a certain extent, the type of children they have. Reproductive freedom’s theoretical and political emphasis on people’s autonomy and well-being is grounded in an individual-centred framework for discussing the ethics of procreation. It protects procreators’ interests and significantly reduces the permissible grounds for interference by third parties. In thi...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - August 13, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Paternal consent in prenatal research: ethical aspects
AbstractThe role of mothers in prenatal research has been discussed extensively. Significantly less work has been done on the father ’s role. In this article, focusing on ethical issues, we seek to redress this imbalance. Examining the father’s position in research conducted on pregnant women, we ask whether or not paternal consent ought to be required in addition to that of the pregnant woman. Having distinguished between di fferent concepts of father and mother, we proceed by giving an overview of the reasons for requiring consent of the woman who is carrying the child. We then examine which of these reasons apply to...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - August 9, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

A gap between the philosophy and the practice of palliative healthcare: sociological perspectives on the practice of nurses in specialised palliative homecare
AbstractPalliative care philosophy is based on a holistic approach to patients, but research shows that possibilities for living up to this philosophy seem limited by historical and administrative structures. From the nurse perspective, this article aims to explore nursing practice in specialised palliative homecare, and how it is influenced by organisational and cultural structures. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with nine nurses were conducted, inspired by Bourdieu. The findings showed that nurses consolidate the doxa of medicine, including medical-professional values that configure a control-oriented, positivis...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - August 4, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The right to refuse diagnostics and treatment planning by artificial intelligence
AbstractIn an analysis of artificially intelligent systems for medical diagnostics and treatment planning we argue that patients should be able to exercise a right to withdraw from AI diagnostics and treatment planning for reasons related to (1) the physician ’s role in the patients’ formation of and acting on personal preferences and values, (2) the bias and opacity problem of AI systems, and (3) rational concerns about the future societal effects of introducing AI systems in the health care sector. (Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy)
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - July 28, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Schr ödinger’s Fetus
AbstractThis paper defends and develops Elizabeth Harman ’s Actual Future Principle with a concept called Schrödinger’s Fetus. I argue that all early fetuses are Schrödinger’s Fetuses: those early fetuses that survive and become conscious beings have full moral status already as early fetuses, but those fetuses that die as early fetuses lack moral status. With Schrödinger’s Fetus, it becomes possible to accept two widely held but contradictory intuitions to be true, and to avoid certain reductiones ad absurdum that pro-life and pro-choice positions face. It also gives a simple solution to the problem of prenatal...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - July 18, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Mechanisms in clinical practice: use and justification
AbstractWhile the importance of mechanisms in determining causality in medicine is currently the subject of active debate, the role of mechanistic reasoning in clinical practice has received far less attention. In this paper we look at this question in the context of the treatment of a particular individual, and argue that evidence of mechanisms is indeed key to various aspects of clinical practice, including assessing population-level research reports, diagnostic as well as therapeutic decision making, and the assessment of treatment effects. We use the pulmonary condition bronchiectasis as a source of examples of the imp...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - July 16, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Letter to Editor
(Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy)
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - July 14, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology as method: modelling analysis through a meta-synthesis of articles on Being-towards-death
This article aims to clarify Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis by taking one discrete element of Heideggerian philosophy (Being-towards-death), and using it ’s clearly defined structure to conduct a meta-synthesis of Heideggerian phenomenological studies on the experience of living with a potentially life-limiting illness. The findings richly illustrate Heidegger’s philosophy that there is either an inauthentic positioning towards death, or an authe ntic positioning towards death with a proposition that (1) death is certain; (2) death is indefinite; (3) death is non-relational; and (4) death is not-to-be-outstripped. N...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - June 30, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Correction to: Scientific supremacy as an obstacle to establishing and sustaining interdisciplinary dialogue across knowledge paradigms in health and medicine
In the original publication, the article title has been published incorrectly. Now the same has been corrected in this correction. (Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy)
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - June 16, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

The Hippocratic Oath and the Declaration of Geneva: legitimisation attempts of professional conduct
AbstractThe Hippocratic Oath and the Declaration of Geneva of the World Medical Association are compared in terms of content and origin. Their relevance for current medical practice is investigated. The status which is ascribed to these documents will be shown and the status which they can reasonably claim to have will be explored. Arguments in favor of the Hippocratic Oath that rely on historical stability or historical origin are being examined. It is demonstrated that they get caught up in paradoxes. Should doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath or the Declaration of Geneva? The Hippocratic Oath is a remarkable historic doc...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - June 12, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

“Patient’s lived experience”
AbstractThis editorial presents a special issue gathering four contributions about the patient ’s lived experience in the context of deep-brain stimulation. It aims at clarifying the meaning of such an experience and its scope for medical practice, the health system and its legal frame. (Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy)
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - June 6, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Autism, autonomy, and authenticity
AbstractAutonomy of people on the autism-spectrum has only been very rarely conceptually explored. Autism spectrum is commonly considered a hetereogenous disorder, and typically described as a behaviorally-defined neurodevelopmental disorder associated with the presence of social-communication deficits and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Autism research mainly focuses on the behavior of autistic people and ways to teach them skills that are in line with social norms. Interventions such as therapies are being justified with the assumption that autists lack the capacity to be self-reflective and to be “author of their...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - June 3, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research

Falling on deaf ears: a qualitative study on clinical ethical committees in France
AbstractThe French medical context is characterized by institutionalization of the ethical reflection in health care facilities and an important disparity between spaces of ethical reflection. In theory, the healthcare professional may mobilise an arsenal of resources to help him in his ethical reflection. But what happens in practice? We conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 health-care professionals who did and did not have recourse to clinical ethical committees. We also implemented two focus groups with 18 professionals involved in various spaces of ethical reflection in order to let them debate about a better w...
Source: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - May 29, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research