healthcare ethics

Event Summary: Hope in Healthcare – a talk by Professor Steve Clarke

Published July 13, 2022 | By admin

In a special lecture on 14 June 2022, Professor Steve Clarke presented work co-authored with Justin Oakley, ‘Hope in Healthcare’.

It is widely supposed that it is important to imbue patients undergoing medical procedures with a sense of hope. But why is hope so important in healthcare, if indeed it is? We examine the answers that are currently on offer and show that none do enough to properly explain the importance that is often attributed to hope in healthcare. We then identify a hitherto unrecognised reason for supposing that it is important to imbue patients undergoing significant medical procedures with hope, which draws on prospect theory, Kahneman and Tversky’s hugely influential descriptive theory about decision making in situations of risk and uncertainty. We also consider some concerns about patient consent and the potential manipulation of patients, that are raised by our account. We then consider some complications for the account raised by religious sources of hope, which are commonly drawn on by patients undergoing major healthcare procedures.

Bio: Steve Clarke is a Professor in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, and a Senior Research Associate in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.

This lecture was jointly organised between the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

Recordings available at
YouTube https://youtu.be/o5e22qnZeaQ

Oxford Podcasts http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/philfac/uehiro/2022-06-23-uehiro-hope-clarke.mp3

Transcript https://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/philfac/uehiro/2022-06-23-uehiro-hope-clarke.srt

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Cross Post: Is This the End of the Road for Vaccine Mandates in Healthcare?

Published February 8, 2022 | By admin

Written by Dominic Wilkinson, Alberto Giubilini, and Julian Savulescu

The UK government recently announced a dramatic U-turn on the COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, originally scheduled to take effect on April 1 2022. Health or social care staff will no longer need to provide proof of vaccination to stay employed. The reason, as health secretary Sajid Javid made clear, is that “it is no longer proportionate”.

There are several reasons why it was the right decision at this point to scrap the mandate. Most notably, omicron causes less severe disease than other coronavirus variants; many healthcare workers have already had the virus (potentially giving them immunity equivalent to the vaccine); vaccines are not as effective at preventing re-infection and transmission of omicron; and less restrictive alternatives are available (such as personal protective equipment and lateral flow testing of staff). Continue reading →

Posted in Alberto Giubilini's Posts, Cross Post, Dominic Wilkinson's Posts, Julian Savulescu's Posts, The Conversation | Tagged , , , , , ,

‘Waiver or Understanding? A Dilemma for Autonomists about Informed Consent’

Published June 8, 2021 | By Roger Crisp

by Roger Crisp

At a recent New St Cross Ethics seminar, Gopal Sreenivasan, Crown University Distinguished Professor in Ethics at Duke University and currently visitor at Corpus Christi College and the Oxford Uehiro Centre, gave a fascinating lecture on whether valid informed consent requires that the consenter have understood the relevant information about what they are being asked to consent to. Gopal argued that it doesn’t. Continue reading →

Posted in Bioethics, Clinical Ethics, Decision Making, Research Ethics, Roger Crisp's Posts, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

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