Visitor Generated Bioethical Issues: Find One, Research One and Post It Here
As someone really interested in the discipline called bioethics, I keep looking around me and looking for ethical issues, which have been popular but not fully resolved, or ethical issues about which many in society are not really aware. Then there are the ethical dilemmas which over the years has been settled by consensus but as social and political and technologic properties within society have progressively changed, these issues are reopened like a almost healed wound that is again abraded. So I keep thinking, what would be interesting next to put on my blog. There are many possibilities but then these are my possibilities. I can state with certainty that I cannot think of all the issues that are perplexing others. This is a democratic blog (notice the small d), therefore I thought now, maybe I should change the format of this blog a bit at times and have my visitors generate a new, yet undiscussed, bioethical issue; a matter of visitor creativity.
Skim through my archives or use the “Search This Blog” service provided by Google located at the top left hand corner of the page to see if the topic was covered previously. If you have a new topic or a new twist of a previously posted topic, post your comments here after you have done a bit of preliminary research on the topic. I might just start up a new thread with your commentary as the lead text of the thread. ..Maurice.
posted by Maurice Bernstein, M.D. @ 8:55:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hello Maurice,
A topic of interest to me is whether doctors are capable of monitoring their own profession, in an ethical manner, in a punitive system? Only extremely ethical people are capable of remaining objective and honest in a system that punishes members for being honest about mistakes. It is ridiculous, in my opinion, for doctors to promote themselves as being capable of self-governing in an ethical manner in a punitive system, when doctors are subject to human nature, as well as suffering from such things as personality disorders, to the same degree as the rest of the population. The approach encourages setting the standard of care very low to protect even the least skilled doctors instead of demanding doctors develop and maintain a high skill level.
“Critics of the current system say it discourages medical staff from honestly admitting errors, for fear of lawsuits.” (http://www.canada.com/cityguides/winnipeg/info/story.html?id=d67bd2e4-95a5-4a33-9917-7ef2112432c5&k=13610)
“In Sweden, when a patient suffers avoidable injury, whether through gross negligence, such as a botched surgery, or through a more understandable but avoidable mistake, such as a misdiagnosis or medication error, the patient—usually with help from the doctor's office—fills out a form requesting compensation.” http://www.slate.com/id/2113103/
If anyone has a subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine I’d appreciate being able to read the article offered at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/3/324 entitled “Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism”
The case of Dr. Michael Swango, who is suspected of murdering between 35-60 patients, provides an example that begs questions be asked around what the priority and mindset of the medical system is. Is it to protect doctors or protect patients?
“After Swango's arrest, Stewart told the New York Times, "(His) case shows that the medical establishment will blindly trust the word of a fellow doctor over the word of other witnesses and that the medical profession cannot adequately police itself." http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/swango/index_1.html
Jaine, you provided a great topic for a discussion thread of it's own. I have put it up at this address.
Any other visitors here have suggestions for topics? ..Maurice.
p.s.- May I make a suggestion for those who want to include a internet link, please create the complete formal HTML coding for the link rather than just the URL address alone. As you will see on the posting page, the formatting is such that if you don't actually create a link, the entire address will not appear on the page. Thanks.
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