How much transparency?
By Dominic Wilkinson (Twitter: @Neonatalethics)
There are reports in the press this week that the remains of 86 unborn fetuses were kept in a UK hospital mortuary for months or even years longer than they should have been. The majority were fetuses less than 12 weeks gestation. According to the report, this arose because of administrative error and a failure to obtain the necessary permissions for cremation.
The hospital has publicly apologized, and set up an enquiry into the error. They are planning to cremate the remaining fetuses. However, they have decided not to contact all of the families and women whose fetal remains were kept on the basis that this would likely cause a greater amount of distress.
Is this the right approach? Guidelines and teaching in medical schools encourage health-care professionals and institutions to own up to their errors and disclose them to patients. Is it justifiable then to not reveal errors on the grounds that this would be too upsetting? How much transparency is desirable in healthcare?
Another Surprising Side-Effect of Paracetamol: Causing ADHD?
Taking the popular over-the-counter pain and fever medication paracetamol during pregnancy might affect the unborn child more than we assumed – and hoped for. Recently, research began to link pre-natal exposure of paracetamol (also known as acetominophen) to asthma and poor motor and communication skills in small children. Now, a new study published yesterday suggests that taking paracetamol during pregnancy comes with an increased risk for the baby of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) later.
The authors of this study investigated 64,322 Danish children (born 1996-2002) and their mothers. The women were asked whether they have taken paracetamol in computer-assisted telephone interviews three times during their pregnancy and shortly after. To asses ADHD in children, the researchers used different ways: they asked the mothers of 7-year-olds about their child’s behaviour using a standardised ADHD questionnaire. Moreover, they used Danish medical registries to gain information about diagnoses of hyperkinetic disorder, which resembles a severe form of ADHD, and descriptions of ADHD medication to the children.
Conspiracies against the laity part 3298: the medical profession.
Well wouldn’t you know it. A surgeon who transmitted antibiotic resistant superbug during operations on people’s hearts doesn’t want you to know he did.
How the Danziger Story Advances the Abortion Debate in America: Actual Futures, Moral Status, and Common Ground
It has become commonplace in recent years to note that the ‘abortion debate’ in America has become entrenched. Indeed, there seem to be few issues in contemporary politics that elicit less common ground than the abortion debate finds in its stalwartly pro-choice and pro-life opponents. It is just as common, if not more so, these days to speak of the ‘attack on Roe v. Wade’ or ‘the attack on women’s rights,’ particularly in light of recent findings that more abortion restrictions were enacted between 2011 and 2013 in the U.S. than in the entire previous decade. Now more than ever, especially for the pro-choice movement, it is necessary to conceptualize novel approaches to the questions of the beginning, end, and quality of life that sit at the heart of the abortion debate. Here I examine a recent case and how it has the potential to advance this debate. Continue reading
The Texan flautist and the fetus
Imagine that when you woke up this morning, you found yourself lying next to an unconscious stranger. The stranger has a rare life-threatening illness, and unbeknownst to you he was plugged in to your organs during the night. You are now stuck to the stranger. If you disconnect the life support he will die. If, though, you remain connected to him for most of the next year his illness will have recovered, and he can safely ben unplugged. What should you do? Are you obliged to stay attached to the stranger? It might be generous of you to give up your body, and good if you choose to do so, but should we require you to remain connected?
Doctors: turn off your computer and listen to your gut
‘Between the NHS and social care, there must be total commitment to ensuring that interaction is paperless, and that, with a patient’s consent, their full medical history can follow them around the system seamlessly.‘ So said Jeremy Hunt,the Health Secretary, on 16 January 2013. And NHS England say that: ‘Our vision is for a fully integrated digital patient record across all care settings by 2018’.
It sounds like a good idea. It’s not. Or not in its present form. Many of the concerns that have been expressed relate to privacy/confidentiality. Those concerns are real. But even if they can be satisfactorily addressed, electronic health records have the potential to do great harm. They divert attention from the patient to the screen, and they cause clinical skills to atrophy.
David Loxterkamp recently observed that the computer in the consulting room is a Frankenstein-like creature: ‘….we have created a place in our exam rooms for a computer that needs our care and feeding. It now directs the flow and purpose of an encounter that once unfolded organically according to the particular needs of the patient.’ The electronic servant becomes the master. Continue reading
Should exceptional people receive exceptional medical treatment?
There are approximately 150,000 human deaths each day around the world. Most of those deaths pass without much notice, yet in the last ten days one death has received enormous, perhaps unprecedented, attention. The death and funeral of Nelson Mandela have been accompanied by countless pages of newsprint and hours of radio and television coverage. Much has been made of what was, by any account, an extraordinary life. There has been less attention, though, on Mandela’s last months and days. One uncomfortable question has not been asked. Was it ethical for this exceptional individual to receive treatment that would be denied to almost everyone else? Continue reading
Caesarean Sections, Autonomy and Consent
In the past week in the UK, an Italian woman has claimed that a health trust had carried out a Caesarean section on her against her will. Whilst details of the case are still emerging, it appears that the woman had been detained under the Mental Health Act whilst pregnant after suffering a panic attack (which, it is reported, was possibly a result of a failure to take medication for a pre-existing mental health condition). Having been hospitalized for a number of weeks, the woman was given a Caesarean section whilst under sedation without consent. It appears that a health trust had been granted permission to carry out the procedure from the Court of Protection. Further to this, Essex social services also decreed that the mother was unfit to raise the child, and took the child into its care. Continue reading
Keeping pace?
If you receive an implanted pacemaker for your heart, does it become your property? When it is no longer any use to you (because you have died), do you have to give it back?
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