...ETHICAL DILEMMAS FACING NURSES ON END-OF-LIFE ISSUES BASED ON CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS HELD IN ELDORET, KENYA Author: Kamau S. Macharia: BScN (Moi), MSc (studying) Nursing Leadership & Health Care Systems Management (University of Colorado, Denver), Higher Dip. Critical Care Nursing (Nbi). Graduate Assistant, School of Nursing & Biomedical Sciences, Kabianga University College (A Constituent College of Moi University), . P 0 Box 2030 20200 Kericho, Kenya , Tel +254 722224577, Email: symomash@gmail.com ETHICAL DILEMMAS FACING NURSES ON END-OF-LIFE ISSUES BASED ON CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS HELD IN ELDORET, KENYA ABSTRACT Problem Statement: A conference to discuss on ethical dilemmas is thought to be a good way of airing out issues. It is unfortunate that at times a patient in our care may die no matter what we do. Profound ethical questions on end of life issues confront the medical personnel as they watch and wait helplessly. This paper touches on ethics, law, social and public policy as they affect nursing practice. Setting: This is a conference proceedings report augmented with a case study of Nelly from a local setting and compares it with two others from elsewhere which were also presented during the conference. Conference was organized by Federation of African Medical Students Associations (FAMSA), Eldoret 2011. The author was a presenter...
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...Chapter 1: Ethical Theory Meta-ethical positions include: * Ethical non-cognitivism (concept that ethics is a matter of feelings) * Ethical relativism (concept that ethics is relative to a particular point of view) * Ethical objectivism (notion that ethics is objective in nature). Meta-Ethical Positions Ethical Non-cognitivism The basis of ethical non-cognitivism is that ethical disagreement can be a highly emotional affair where no amount of reasoning is likely to convince the other party. * Example: “Let’s just agree to disagree” Ethical Relativism * Ethical relativism says that while ethical statements are cognitively meaningful, they do not hold in any objective sense because they depend on our point of view. * If we accept ethical relativism, then ethical disagreement among people who do not share the same perspective becomes impossible. * It assumes that if people agree on something, then it must be true. * Ethical relativism is suspect for a pragmatic reason: it is fundamentally at variance with our social practice. * Example: “To each his own”, or the belief that what’s right for one group isn’t necessarily right for another Ethical Objectivism * Ethical objectivism holds that right and wrong are objective phenomena. * Example: “I’m right and you’re wrong” What is Ethics? * As a discipline, ethics is a branch of philosophy. * It deals with questions of right and wrong conduct, and with what we ought to do and what...
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...ABSTRACT The most important general and theoretical horizons regarding bioethics refer to the foundation of ethical theories. We can talk about two main general categories in which we can place the ethical theories: teleological and deontological. From the first category we enumerate the Aristotelian perspective or the one developed by J. St. Mill, while the Kantian perspective is exemplary for deontological ethics. According to the teleological perspective, a form of human behavior is described as moral or non-moral according to the goals explicitly set. The mere achievement of these goals is a necessary and sufficient condition to qualify as moral people’s actions or deeds without taking into account the “intermediate stages” of the actions performed to achieve those goals. Deontology, as a general horizon of articulating the ethical theories, believes on the contrary that in every moment of our existence, every action or deed that we accomplish can be described as moral or non-moral according to the ethical principles underlying our behavior. The very important consequences arising from the two general theoretical horizons concern two different perspectives on “human nature”, or what we call the essence of the human being. Starting from this horizon we will have the consequentialist and deontological dimensions related to euthanasia. The bioethical dimension in which we will discuss the issue of euthanasia involves both dimensions or horizons. The arguments against...
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...Chapter 7 : Moral Issues 7. 1 The Environment 7. 2 Life 7. 3 Rearmament and War 7. 4 Business Ethics 7. 5 Sexuality and the Family 7. 6 Discrimination 7. 7 Freedom of Information 7. 8 Science and Technology Chapter Overview This chapter will discuss the contemporary moral issues. There are eight main sub-headings and examined in turn. Students may not only learn about moral facts, principles and theories, but also some important moral issues so that they will kept in phase with current issues in facing the challenge out there. This chapter also encourages students to ...
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...University of Warwick School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2010-05 LEGAL FORM AND MORAL JUDGMENT: THE PROBLEM OF EUTHANASIA Alan Norrie Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1577163 ABSTRACT In this paper, I want to consider the way in which categories of legal responsibility in the criminal law’s general part mediate and finesse broader moral issues around questions of euthanasia. I INTRODUCTION Euthanasia and its close cousin assisted dying represent extremely problematic areas for the criminal law, as the recent guidelines issue around assisted suicide testifies. The effect of these guidelines is to make no official change in the law, yet to make it clear as a matter of practice that where the law on its face has been broken, there will be no prosecution where the defendant was motivated by good moral reasons. On a legal realist vision of law, the law has changed, but on a positivistic reading it has not. What we have in fact is a rather complex and potentially troublesome juxtaposition of legal rule and administrative discretion. This balances strong social, political and moral claims in a society where there is no consensus as to the rights and wrongs of helping someone to die. In this context, the legal realist can say ‘I told you so’, and the legal positivist can cluck disapprovingly, but both miss the point, which is that the law’s messy mixing of messages in a pragmatic compromise reflects the moral impasse in a way that...
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... subjective then no disagree: Paul I like my coffee sweetened, Helen unsweetened: no disagreement B. If Paul “drs should sometimes assist their patient’s death, Helen: No (then real disagreement) C. There is a point here about disagreement A characteristic of ethics and ethical argumentation consistency: A. It is always wrong to kill a human being B. Abortion is not always wrong C. I am committed to holding that abortion isn’t always the killing of a human being a. This sets a limit on the subjectivity of ethics b. Another such limit: factual accuracy c. One can enjoy a taste without knowing what it is d. In ethics we have to understand the facts of the matter: patient’s prognosis, wishes etc in regards to resuscitation (2) Ethical relativism A. Similarity to subjectivism: B. Ethics depends upon a group, a culture etc. a. Darius: eat or burn one’s dead b. Herodotus each culture things its custom best c. Nomos vs. Phusis d. Anthropology: no superior morality which...
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...Otherness: Essays and Studies 1.1 October 2010 Haunting Poetry: Trauma, Otherness and Textuality in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days Olu Jenzen Early conceptions of trauma are intimately linked not only with modernity but specifically with the height of industrialisation (Micale and Lerner 2001). This is converged in the opening of Specimen Days particularly in the image of an industrial accident at the ironworks where a young man is killed by the stamping machine. His young brother, replacing him at the machine after the funeral, then experiences an apparition of the dead brother still trapped inside the machine, which leads him to believe that all machines house entrapped ghosts of the dead. Writing on the Victorians’ anxieties about internal disruption caused by the advent of the railway, Jill Matus (2001, 415) has pointed out that, Freud himself remarked in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), [that] there is ‘a condition [which] has long been known and described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation...
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...ETHICS FOR HOLISTIC PRACTICE Debate topic – Couples wishing to undergo IVF treatment should be awarded the legal right to choose the sex of their child. Good afternoon everyone our debate topic today is whether or not couples wishing to undergo IVF treatment should be awarded the legal right to choose the sex of their child. I’m Melinda and along with Angelique and Melissa we will be presenting the affirmative argument and the negative argument will be presented by Kristen, Judy and Deb. Sex selection, also known as gender selection, has attracted great interest and controversy over the years. Gender selection has been associated with a number of ethical, moral, social and legal issues. Sex selection may be performed for medical reasons to avoid sex-linked diseases or for parental preference. The topics I will be covering include eugenics, beneficence, utilitarianism and pre-genetic screening in regards to sex linked diseases. Eugenics can be defined as the study or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species. In the context of IVF treatment positive eugenics encourages reproduction by implantation of healthy embryos with inheritable desirable traits and negative eugenics seeks to identify and dispose of embryos found to carry undesirable inheritable traits. Utilitarianism in the context of IVF sex selection and genetic screening is defined by the principle of utility which seeks to judge moral rules, actions and behaviours on the basis...
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...Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness – from overwhelming grief to seething rage – and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime It has inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella". Shakespeare based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. He may also have drawn on or perhaps written an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet. He almost certainly created the title role for Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors and actresses from each successive age. Three different early versions of the play are extant, the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio . Each version includes lines, and even entire scenes, missing from the others. The play's structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny. One such example is the centuries-old debate about Hamlet's hesitation to kill his uncle...
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...Who was William Shakespeare? Shakespeare is William Shakespeare, one of the English-speaking world's greatest playwrights and poets, who possessed a great knowledge of human nature and transformed the English theatre. Yet many facts of his life remain a mystery. Some have been acquired from painstaking looks at the records of the time, so that this summary is based on generally agreed facts. It has been said that we only know three things about Shakespeare: that he was born, married and died. He was baptised on April 26, 1564; we do not know his birth date, but many scholars believe it was April 23, 1564. His father was John Shakespeare (who was a glover and leather merchant) and his mother Mary Arden (who was a landed local heiress). John had a remarkable run of success as a merchant, alderman, and high bailiff of Stratford, during William's early childhood. His fortunes declined, however, in the late 1570s. William lived for most of his early life in Stratford-upon-Avon. We do not know exactly when he went to London but he is said to have arrived in 1592. There is great conjecture about Shakespeare's childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival that of Eton. While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory. In addition, Shakespeare's...
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...state. One is the body of a woman who died after attempting to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger. She was a poor woman who lives in the slums; she had no money to take care of the child and no way to feed her living children if she lost her work from the pregnancy. Another body is that of a one-month-old fetus that was aborted once the mother found out that it was going to be a girl. She has just had one child and wanted to wait for a couple of years to have another. While looking at these bodies the philosophers begin to discuss the question: “Is abortion immoral”? How would the discussion proceed if the two philosophers were: 1) You and Judith Thomson? 2) You ad Sidney Callahan? 3) Which position (s) do you find morally compelling and why? In this scenario, the two philosophers are sitting on a bench at the county morgue. They are looking at the bodies that died involving abortion’s issues. I will call case A – a woman who was six months pregnant due to rape and died from the pregnancy complication because abortion was illegal in her state. Case B is the poor woman with too many responsibilities in life, died from self-abortion. The third is case C, a body of a four-month-old fetus that was aborted just because the mother had a child and did not want one more girl currently. Before discussing the conversation between the two philosophers - Judith Thomson and me, or Sidney Callahan and me - about three mentioned cases, we will look at Thomson...
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...Knowledge Area Module VI Contemporary Issues and the Ethical Delivery of Health Services Student: Harold Taitt, harold.taitt@waldenu.edu Student ID # A00293212 Program: Ph.D. Health Services Specialization: Health Management and Policy Faculty Mentor: Dr. Robert Hoye, robert.hoye@waldenu.edu Faculty Assessor: Dr. Jim Goes, jim.goes@waldenu.edu Walden University May 10, 2013 Abstract Breadth Component In this age of rapidly evolving technological advances, many of the legal and ethical issues that are challenging the delivery of health care and the health care profession are new. As we confront the legal, moral, and ethical aspects of health care, we are seldom faced with decisions that require or are resolved by simple right or wrong answers (Edge & Kreiger, 1998). In the Breadth component of KAM VI, I focus on several ethical theories and how those theories influence the way ethical issues and concerns are addressed and managed in the allocation and delivery of health care services. I critically assess and evaluate those theories, concepts, and derivative principles as they impact important decisions and the implications of those decisions within the context of social change and with special emphasis on health care management and policy. In addition, I discuss the key assumptions on which the selected theories are constructed, compare and contrast the writers’ interpretations across theories, and conclude by providing a critical commentary on the merits of the selected...
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...Unit 4: Development through the life stages Unit 4: Development through the life stages Name: Fatimah Al_Asadi Teacher name: Ms John What is this unit about? This unit enables learners to gain understanding of the different life stages and how people grow and develop. It requires learners to reflect on the importance of a variety of factors and major life events on the development of individuals, and to consider the nature-nurture debate. This unit will also allow learners to gain an insight into the aging process and to understand both positive and negative perspectives of ageing. Learning outcomes: * Understand human growth and development through the life stages. * Understand how life factors and events may influence the development of the individual. * Understand physical changes and psychological perspectives in relation to ageing. P1: Describe the physical, intellectual, emotional and social development through the life stages. The main life stages of human development are: * Conception * Pregnancy and birth. * Infancy * Childhood * Adolescence * Adulthood * Later adulthood. The holistic development of an individual involves them developing physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially. All humans go through the following things: * Growth: an increase in some measured quantity, such as height or weight. * Development: complex changes including an increase in skills...
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...VOLUME EDITOR S. WALLER is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Montana State University Bozeman. Her areas of research are philosophy of neurology, philosophy of cognitive ethology (especially dolphins, wolves, and coyotes), and philosophy of mind, specifically the parts of the mind we disavow. SERIES EDITOR FRITZ ALLHOFF is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Western Michigan University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition to editing the Philosophy for Everyone series, Allhoff is the volume editor or co-editor for several titles, including Wine & Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Whiskey & Philosophy (with Marcus P. Adams, Wiley, 2009), and Food & Philosophy (with Dave Monroe,Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). P H I L O S O P H Y F O R E V E RYO N E Series editor: Fritz Allhoff Not so much a subject matter, philosophy is a way of thinking.Thinking not just about the Big Questions, but about little ones too.This series invites everyone to ponder things they care about, big or small, significant, serious … or just curious. Running & Philosophy: A Marathon for the Mind Edited by Michael W. Austin Wine & Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking Edited by Fritz Allhoff Food & Philosophy: Eat,Think and Be Merry Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe Beer & Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking Edited by Steven D. Hales Whiskey & Philosophy:...
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...WORKING WITH ABUSED CHILDREN 1 / CHAPTER ONE The Abuse of Filipino Childr en Filipino families consider children as gifts from God (Bulatao 1975). They are persons who inspire love and affection and bring happiness and security in the twilight years of parents. Interestingly, children are seen as links to immortality because children pass on from one generation to another the family’s name, history, and heritage. Often, children are portrayed as being nurtured and properly attended to in their homes; however, Filipino children are not as secure and protected as they are ideally portrayed. The increasing number of street children who work on the streets or beg for alms from pedestrians and motorists belie such an idealized portrayal. Street children, among other things, are the most palpable reminder that all is not well with Filipino children. Reality reveals the many children who are denied even the most minimum of needs like food, love, nurturance, stability, security, and stimulating learning environment that will allow for their healthy development. Many Filipino children are rushed into maturity because early on in their lives, they are forced to contend with difficult problems and to take on adult roles and responsibilities. Media and popular and academic literature, more than any other time, has brought to our attention the plight of children, be they street children or not, who perform adult roles and who are in need of the basic components ...
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