scholarly journals Bioethics in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Aida C. Coss Rojas ◽  
Raúl Jiménez Piña

The year 2020 has marked a major change in our daily lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges for governments, professionals, and society in general, mainly in health care. In this context, the presence of bioethical dilemmas has been inevitable, for this reason we analyse some of the dilemmas that have arisen in ​​healthcare and biomedical research.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Vogel ◽  
Christoph Beger ◽  
Ruth Gausche ◽  
Anne Jurkutat ◽  
Roland Pfaeffle ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures implemented to stop the pandemic had a broad impact on our daily lives. Besides work and social life, health care is affected on many levels. In particular, there is concern that attendance in health care programs will drop or hospital admissions will be delayed due to COVID-19-related anxieties, especially in children. Therefore, we compared the number of weekly visits to 78 German pediatric institutions between 2019 and 2020. Results We found no significant differences during the first 10 weeks of the year. However, and importantly, from April, the weekly number of visits was more than 35% lower in 2020 than in 2019 (p = 0.005). In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to relate to families´ utilization of outpatient well-child clinics and pediatric practice attendance in Germany.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. e2013424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rezvan Ameli ◽  
Ninet Sinaii ◽  
Colin P. West ◽  
María José Luna ◽  
Samin Panahi ◽  
...  

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 547-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Brooks ◽  
Audrey King ◽  
Mark Tonack ◽  
Helen Simson ◽  
Maria Gould ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVES:To identify user perspectives on the issues that impact the quality of the daily lives of ventilator-assisted individuals living in the community.METHODS:Semistructured interviews were held with 26 Canadian ventilator-assisted individuals (mean age 44±14 [SD] years, range 23 to 60 years; mean ventilator experience 18±13 years, range three to 53 years) whose disability from neuromuscular conditions necessitated assistance with activities of daily living. Participants described their daily life experiences and perceptions of the factors that limited or enhanced their quality. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and analyzed for emergent codes and themes.RESULTS:Ventilator users characterized important issues in terms of personal successes and limitations, as well as dependencies on others for daily living. Personal support services, income security, health care and transportation were important positive contributors to their quality of life. Dependency on others was clearly a negative contributor. The ventilator was regarded as a form of assistive technology, similar to a wheelchair. Ventilator users perceived that ventilation was associated with a stigma and negative assumptions about disability, particularly if suctioning was required.CONCLUSIONS:The majority of participants considered home mechanical ventilation to be a positive benefit for independent living, enhancing their overall health. They were clear as to the issues of importance to them, and formulated recommendations for health care providers and policy makers that could improve the quality of their daily lives. Many of the issues identified in the present report are faced by the growing community of ventilator users.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-57
Author(s):  
Jane Shulman ◽  
David Kenneth Wright

How can health care providers (HCPs) working with 2SLGBTQ+ patients enact a whole person care approach during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its aftermath, and in such desperate times, is it even reasonable to expect them to? In this presentation, a nurse/nursing educator and a health care researcher/frequent patient discuss their observations and experiences of whole person care during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The conversation highlights that in the immediate chaos early on, and in the face of exhaustion, trauma, and burnout as the pandemic progressed, attending to the whole personhood of patients was/is paramount for HCPs and for the people they treat. The presenters reflect on the amplified significance of a whole person approach for 2SLGBTQ+ people who may have had negative health care experiences in the past, and may fear that they will not receive equitable care in the chaotic context of a pandemic. A whole person care approach is perhaps most necessary when it is also most difficult. In a period of such profound distress, a deeper sense of connectedness to patients may help HCPs manage feelings of helplessness they are likely to encounter, and surely helps the people they treat. The goal of this presentation is to begin a discussion about the ways that whole person approaches benefit 2SLGBTQ+ patients as well as their HCPs, with the hope that it will spark ideas for attendees to develop in their own practices.


Author(s):  
Felix Holl ◽  
Jennifer Kircher ◽  
Walter J. Swoboda ◽  
Johannes Schobel

In the face of demographic change and constantly increasing health care costs, health care system decision-makers face ever greater challenges. Mobile health applications (mHealth apps) have the potential to combat this trend. However, in order to integrate mHealth apps into care structures, an evaluation of such apps is needed. In this paper, we focus on the criteria and methods of evaluating mHealth apps for cardiovascular disease and the implications for developing a widely applicable evaluation framework for mHealth interventions. Our aim is to derive substantiated patterns and starting points for future research by conducting a quasi-systematic scoping review of relevant peer-reviewed literature published in English or German between 2000 and 2021. We screened 4066 articles and identified n = 38 studies that met our inclusion criteria. The results of the data derived from these studies show that usability, motivation, and user experience were evaluated primarily using standardized questionnaires. Usage protocols and clinical outcomes were assessed primarily via laboratory diagnostics and quality-of-life questionnaires, and cost effectiveness was tested primarily based on economic measures. Based on these findings, we propose important considerations and elements for the development of a common evaluation framework for professional mHealth apps, including study designs, data collection tools, and perspectives.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Pols

The emancipation of patients, their organisation and their participation in medical research and health care policy has expanded tremendously. With these successful attempts at participation, however, there is one problem that has so far hardly been articulated and seems to be unrecognized in conceptions of the Patient 2.0 as an informed and active patient. This is the assumption that there is only one kind of knowledge that matters to patients, and to which they can contribute: biomedical knowledge. The paper explores different kinds of knowledge that patients need to engage with in their life with chronic disease, and articulates a particular form of knowledge – patient knowledge – as a form of practical knowledge that patients use and develop in order to relate to medical knowledge and live their daily lives with disease. The analysis of a small webcam community of Dutch patients with an incurable lung disease will show that patients need to translate medical knowledge in order to make it useful to their daily lives, and need to coordinate health care aims with other aims in life. Rather than looking for ways to legitimate their knowledge, patients try out strategies that may work in specific situations, even if temporarily. The paper argues for a better support of the development of patient knowledge and the practices for developing it, rather than singularly equipping people with medical knowledge that is often oriented towards cure rather than towards living with a disease that will not go away.


This book explores the history of health care in postcolonial state-making and the fragmentation of the health system in Syria during the conflict. It analyzes the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) in enabling attacks on health facilities and distinguishes the differences between humanitarian solutions and refugee populations’ expectations. It also describes the way in which humanitarian actors have fed the war economy. The book highlights the lived experience of siege in all its layers. It examines how humanitarian actors have become part of the information wars that have raged throughout the past ten years and how they have chosen to position themselves in the face of grave violations of IHL.


Author(s):  
Rachel McBride Lindsey

In 1900, Kodak released “The Brownie” camera, which opened picture-taking to a wide array of people from various socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities, and regions. Lindsey notes that with this change, photographs shifted from individual acts of beholding to objects that contained narrative cues. The introduction of ambiguity also arose: photographs didn’t just authorize identity, but confuse it. Finally, the Brownie changed American religion by extending the communion of shadows into previously uncaptured and more daily religious activities: missionaries could capture and document their experiences abroad; families recorded baptisms and holidays; and individuals captured the saints and ghosts they encountered in their daily lives.


2018 ◽  
pp. 732-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Pandian

Medical care generally relies on the face-to-face encounter between patients and doctors. In places where face-to-face encounters are not possible, telemedicine technologies are relied upon to link patients to specialist doctors for consultation and to obtain opinion. The telemedicine technologies provide improved health care to the underprivileged in inaccessible areas at reduced cost. Telemedicine also improve quality of health care and more importantly reduce the isolation of specialists, nurses and allied health professionals. This review papers discusses the telemedicine technologies and its history, the communications technologies that are being used. The paper also covers the advantages and benefits of telemedicine. Also the recent advances that are going on in telemedicine in the areas of m-health, Wearable Physiological Monitoring System (WPMS), Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). Finally, the paper concludes with some of the drawbacks or issues of telemedicine technologies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document