Medical Ethics
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Nurses Create Approach to Ethical Decision-Making
Follow the four “Rs”: Recognize what is behind problematic decision-making, Release preconceived attitudes, Reconsider new approaches, and Restart with a fresh focus.
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Establishing the Right Policies on Decision-Making for Unrepresented ICU Patients
A new policy statement recommends institutions prevent patients from becoming unrepresented in the first place by offering advance care planning. Conduct thorough capacity assessments and search for potential surrogates before assuming patients are unrepresented.
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Black Researchers at Disadvantage for NIH Funding
Three separate analyses reveal gaps in funding, peer review scores, and publication rates.
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Ethical Responses If Patients Ask for Provider of Different Race
If mishandled, the situation can result in problems ranging from bad clinical outcomes to Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act violations — even litigation.
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Ethics Can Help Drive Efforts to Address Racial Disparities in Healthcare
The healthcare industry must recognize that it is not enough to avoid actions that are affirmatively biased against minority groups. It takes affirmative efforts to overcome a deeply ingrained history of exclusion.
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July Is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month
Faced with health disparities and racial inequities, industry calls for focused attention on the mental well-being of communities of color.
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New FDA Guidance Explains COVID-19 Expanded Access Policy
The Food and Drug Administration published an eight-page guidance for IRBs handling expanded access to investigational products during the pandemic. The guidance, issued in June, explains how IRBs might review individual patient expanded access requests for investigational drugs and biological products during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
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Actions for IRBs Reviewing Vaccine Challenge Trials
As the world looks for a safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, IRBs should review the bioethical implications of this type of study design, including assessing risks and benefits.
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Vaccine Challenge Trials Present Ethical Issues to IRBs, HRPPs
Bioethicists and researchers say it may be possible to shorten the typical 15-year-plus vaccine timeline through a challenge trial. In this model, participants receive the study vaccine, the are deliberately exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Safety and efficacy are important, but the risk-benefit balance for study participants is weighed more heavily in favor of the greater public good.
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Ethical Processes Needed When Patients Ask to Stop Left Ventricular Assist Devices
Of patients with left ventricular assist devices, about half end up deciding to withdraw them. Investigators noticed that when the patient was the one making the request, the entire decision-making process seemed to take longer.