Vulnerability is a key concept in traditional and contemporary bioethics. In the philosophical literature, vulnerability is understood not only to be an ontological condition of humanity, but also to be a cons...
Virginia Sanchini, Roberta Sala and Chris Gastmans
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:84
Biobanks have recently been established in several low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the Arab region of the Middle East. We aimed to explore the views of biobank managers regarding the challenges, et...
Ahmed Samir Abdelhafiz, Mamoun Ahram, Maha Emad Ibrahim, Alya Elgamri, Ehsan Gamel, Rania Labib and Henry Silverman
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:83
Over the past few years, five domains of importance about the current state of bioethics in Saudi Arabia have shaped the perspective of most research: doctor-patient relationship, informed consent, do-not-resu...
Alexander Woodman, Khawaja Bilal Waheed, Mohammad Rasheed and Shakil Ahmad
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:82
The twenty-first century has witnessed an exponential increase in healthcare quality research. As such activities become more prevalent, physicians are increasingly needed to participate as subjects in researc...
Sylvia J. Hysong and Amy L. McGuire
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:81
Ethical challenges constitute an inseparable part of daily decision-making processes in all areas of healthcare. In prehospital emergency medicine, decision-making commonly takes place in everyday life, under ...
Henriette Bruun, Louise Milling, Søren Mikkelsen and Lotte Huniche
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:80
300 million operations and procedures are performed annually across the world, all of which require a patient’s informed consent. No standardised measure of the consent process exists in current clinical pract...
Liam J. Convie, Joshua M. Clements, Scott McCain, Jeffrey Campbell, Stephen J. Kirk and Mike Clarke
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:79
Existing research on perceptions of plagiarism and cultural influences mainly focuses on comparisons between the Western World and the Eastern World. However, possible differences within the Western World have...
Nannan Yi, Benoit Nemery and Kris Dierickx
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:78
Compulsory treatments represent a legal means of imposing treatment on an individual, usually with a mental illness, who refuses therapeutic intervention and poses a risk of self-harm or harm to others. Compul...
Sérgio M. Martinho, Bárbara Santa-Rosa and Margarida Silvestre
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:77
Pediatricians in developing countries face different ethical dilemmas than do doctors working in settings with more resources. There are very few studies from developing countries analyzing pediatricians’ know...
Atnafu Mekonnen Tekleab and John D. Lantos
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:76
People who are unable to make decisions about participating in research rely on proxies to make a decision based on their wishes and preferences. However, patients rarely discuss their preferences about resear...
Victoria Shepherd
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:75
For the benefits of advance care planning to be realised during a hospital admission, the treating team must have accurate knowledge of the law pertaining to implementation of advance care directives (ACDs) an...
Jamie Bryant, Amy Waller, Alison Bowman, Robert Pickles, Carolyn Hullick, Emma Price, Ben White, Lindy Willmott, Anne Knight, Mary-Ann Ryall and Rob Sanson-Fisher
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:74
Junior medical doctors have a key role in discussions and decisions about treatment and end-of-life care for people with dementia in hospital. Little is known about junior doctors’ decision-making processes wh...
Amy Waller, Jamie Bryant, Alison Bowman, Ben P. White, Lindy Willmott, Robert Pickles, Carolyn Hullick, Emma Price, Anne Knight, Mary-Ann Ryall, Mathew Clapham and Rob Sanson-Fisher
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:73
In Saudi clinical settings, benevolent family care that reflects strongly held sociocultural values is commonly used to justify overriding respect for patient autonomy. Because the welfare of individuals is co...
Manal Z. Alfahmi
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:72
Debates around euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are ongoing around the globe. Public support has been mounting in Western countries, while some decline has been observed in the USA and Eastern E...
Reetta P. Piili, Pekka Louhiala, Jukka Vänskä and Juho T. Lehto
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:71
The coronavirus 2019 pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on healthcare services and magnified ethical dilemmas related to how resources should be allocated. These resources include, among others, personal ...
Consent in medical practice is a process riddled with layers of complexities. To some extent, this is inevitable given that different medical conditions raise different sets of issues for doctors and patients....
Farrah Raza and James Neuberger
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:69
Ethics is the science of moral and ethical rules recognised in human life and attempts to verify what is morally right and wrong. Healthcare ethics is seen as an integrated part of the daily activities of heal...
Gebreyohannes Yeshineh, Amsalu Feleke, Chalie Tadie, Asebe Hagos, Wubshet Debebe, Getachew Teshale and Lake Yazachew
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:68
Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS) have been established to support healthcare professionals in addressing ethically sensitive issues in clinical practice and, in many countries, they are under developmen...
Chiara Crico, Virginia Sanchini, Paolo G. Casali and Gabriella Pravettoni
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:67
In end-of-life situations, the phrase “do everything” is sometimes invoked by physicians, patients, or substitute decision-makers (SDM), though its meaning is ambiguous. We examined instances of the phrase “do...
Holly Yim, Syeda Shanza Hashmi, Brian Dewar, Claire Dyason, Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, Susan Lamb and Michel Shamy
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:66
Sharing anonymized/de-identified clinical trial data and publishing research outcomes in scientific journals, or presenting them at conferences, is key to data-driven scientific exchange. However, when data fr...
Friedrich Maritsch, Ingeborg Cil, Colin McKinnon, Jesse Potash, Nicole Baumgartner, Valérie Philippon and Borislava G. Pavlova
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:65
In this paper, we start by comparing the two agents, Ann and Bob, who are involved in two car crashes. Whereas Ann crashes her car through no fault of her own, Bob crashes as a result of reckless driving. Unli...
Joar Røkke Fystro, Bjørn Hofmann and Eli Feiring
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:64
When rationing health care, a commonly held view among ethicists is that there is no ethical difference between withdrawing or withholding medical treatments. In reality, this view does not generally seem to b...
Liam Strand, Lars Sandman, Gustav Tinghög and Ann-Charlotte Nedlund
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:63
Patient participation in clinical ethics support services (CESS) has been marked as an important issue. There seems to be a wide variety of practices globally, but extensive theoretical or empirical studies on...
Marleen Eijkholt, Janine de Snoo-Trimp, Wieke Ligtenberg and Bert Molewijk
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:62
Clinical ethical practice (CEP) is required for healthcare workers (HCWs) to improve health-care delivery. However, there are gaps between accepted ethical standards and CEP in Ethiopia. There have been limite...
Nebiyou Tafesse, Assegid Samuel, Abiyu Geta, Fantanesh Desalegn, Lidia Gebru, Tezera Tadele, Ewnetu Genet, Mulugeta Abate and Kemal Jemal
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:61
The aim of the present survey was to investigate newly discharged hospital patients’ opinions on secondary use of their hospital data and biospecimens within the context of health research in general and, more...
Hilde Eikemo, Linda Tømmerdal Roten and Arne Einar Vaaler
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:60
Community engagement (CE) in research is valuable for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. Despite existing guidance on how to ensure meaningful CE, much of what it takes to achieve this goal differs across set...
John Barugahare and Nancy E. Kass
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:59
A growing number of studies show the potential of loyalty card data for use in health research. However, research into public perceptions of using this data is limited. This study aimed to investigate public a...
Elizabeth H. Dolan, Kate Shiells, James Goulding and Anya Skatova
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:58
Health screening is undertaken to identify individuals who are deemed at higher risk of disease for further diagnostic testing so that they may possibly benefit from interventions to modify the natural course ...
Sarah Ee Fang Yong, Mee Lian Wong and Teck Chuan Voo
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:57
In China, informal payments in the medical profession, which workers in the public health care system receive from patients in the course of performing profession-related activities, are usually referred to as...
Hanhui Xu and Mengci Yuan
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:56
Implementation of recommendations from clinical practice guidelines is essential for evidence based clinical practice. However, the most effective methods of implementation are unclear. We conducted a national...
Jex Kuo, Sonja Woodall, Jane Harding, Caroline Crowther and Jane Alsweiler
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:55
Policy regulations of ethically controversial genetic technologies should, on the one hand, be based on ethical principles. On the other hand, they should be socially acceptable to ensure implementation. In ad...
Svenja Küchenhoff, Johannes Doerflinger and Nora Heinzelmann
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:54
Rapid ethical access to personal health information (PHI) to support research is extremely important during pandemics, yet little is known regarding patient preferences for consent during such crises. This fol...
Sarah Tosoni, Indu Voruganti, Katherine Lajkosz, Shahbano Mustafa, Anne Phillips, S. Joseph Kim, Rebecca K. S. Wong, Donald Willison, Carl Virtanen, Ann Heesters and Fei-Fei Liu
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:53
For children with life-limiting conditions who are unable to participate in decision-making, decisions are made for them by their parents and paediatricians. Shared decision-making is widely recommended in pae...
Sidharth Vemuri, Jenny Hynson, Katrina Williams and Lynn Gillam
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:52
Numerous guidelines and policies for ethical research practice have evolved over time, how this translates to global health practice in resource-constrained settings is unclear. The purpose of this paper is to...
Blessings M. Kapumba, Nicola Desmond and Janet Seeley
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:51
Research regarding the drivers of acceptance of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) by physicians is still rather limited. The literature that does exist, however, tends to focus on problems regarding the...
Daan Van Cauwenberge, Wim Van Biesen, Johan Decruyenaere, Tamara Leune and Sigrid Sterckx
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:50
Sexual boundary violations (SBV) in healthcare are harmful and exploitative sexual transgressions in the professional–client relationship. Persons with mental health issues or intellectual disabilities, especi...
Charlotte Kröger, Eva van Baarle, Guy Widdershoven, Roland Bal and Jan-Willem Weenink
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:49
Following the increased presence of the Right-to-Die Movement, improved end-of-life options, and the political and legal status of aid-in-dying around the globe, suicide tourism has become a promising alternat...
Daniel Sperling
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:48
An increasing number of older patients have to decide on a treatment plan for advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD), involving dialysis or conservative care. Shared decision-making (SDM) is recommended as the ...
Wouter R. Verberne, Anne M. Stiggelbout, Willem Jan W. Bos and Johannes J. M. van Delden
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:47
Human Infection Studies (HIS) have emerged as an important research approach with the potential to fast track the global development of vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases, including in low resourc...
Primus Che Chi, Esther Awuor Owino, Irene Jao, Philip Bejon, Melissa Kapulu, Vicki Marsh and Dorcas Kamuya
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:46
Commentators believe that the ethical decision-making climate is instrumental in enhancing interprofessional collaboration in intensive care units (ICUs). Our aim was twofold: (1) to determine the perception o...
Henry Silverman, Tracey Wilson, Samuel Tisherman, Raya Kheirbek, Trishna Mukherjee, Ali Tabatabai, Karen McQuillan, Rachel Hausladen, Melissa Davis-Gilbert, Eunsung Cho, Kerri Bouchard, Samantha Dove, Julie Landon and Michele Zimmer
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:45
The acceptance of informal payments by doctors is usually viewed as unethical behavior. However, in China, such behavior is a common practice. In this study, we focus on the gender differences in accepting red...
Mengci Yuan and Hanhui Xu
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:44
Limited research has been conducted on explanations and understandings of biobanking for future genomic research in African contexts with low literacy and limited healthcare access. We report on the findings o...
Manono Luthuli, Nothando Ngwenya, Dumsani Gumede, Resign Gunda, Dickman Gareta, Olivier Koole, Mark J. Siedner, Emily B. Wong and Janet Seeley
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:43
There is a paramount need for moral development for pharmacists and pharmacy students to practice the patient-centered profession. We aimed to explore the current situational judgment utilizing ethical reasoni...
Fahad Saleh Alkhuzaee, Majid Ali, Khang Wen Goh, Yaser Mohammed Al-Worafi and Long Chiau Ming
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:42
Health data-driven activities have become central in diverse fields (research, AI development, wearables, etc.), and new ethical challenges have arisen with regards to privacy, integrity, and appropriateness o...
Jennifer Viberg Johansson, Heidi Beate Bentzen and Deborah Mascalzoni
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:41
To prevent sexual boundary violations (SBV) in mental health care institutions overall governments require these institutions to report SBV incidents to a central registry and to develop institutional guidelin...
Lara Vesentini, Kim Dewilde, Frieda Matthys, Dirk De Wachter, Hubert Van Puyenbroeck and Johan Bilsen
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:40
HIV cure research involving cell and gene therapy has intensified in recent years. There is a growing need to identify ethical standards and safeguards to ensure cell and gene therapy (CGT) HIV cure research r...
Karine Dubé, John Kanazawa, Hursch Patel, Michael Louella, Laurie Sylla, Jeff Sheehy, Lynda Dee, Jeff Taylor, Jen Adair, Kim Anthony-Gonda, Boro Dropulić, John A. Sauceda, Michael J. Peluso, Steven G. Deeks and Jane Simoni
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:39
Patient-centred care and patient autonomy is one of the key factors to better quality of service provision, hence patient outcomes. It enables the development of patients’ trusts which is an important element ...
Zhanming Liang, Min Xu, Guowei Liu, Yongli Zhou and Peter Howard
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:38
Research proactively and deliberately aims to bring about specific changes to how societies function and individual lives fare. However, in the ever-expanding field of ethical regulations and guidance for rese...
Kristine Bærøe, Angeliki Kerasidou, Michael Dunn and Inger Lise Teig
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:37
Human biological materials are usually stored for possible future use in research because they preserve valuable biological information, save time and resources, which would have been spent on collection of fr...
Joseph Ochieng, Betty Kwagala and Nelson Sewankambo
BMC Medical Ethics 2022 23:36
During the last decade, the possibility for women to cryopreserve oocytes in anticipation of age-related fertility loss, also referred to as social egg freezing, has become an established practice at fertility...
Michiel De Proost, Gily Coene, Julie Nekkebroeck and Veerle Provoost
