Moral Reasoning in Military Medical Ethics

Applied ethics must resolve moral dilemmas, because, at the end of the day, medical personnel and military commanders must act. Reaching a defensible ethical decision requires moral agents to define the military and medical mission clearly and answer the following questions. Is the proposed operation or policy an effective and necessary means to attain the mission’s goals? Are the costs proportionate, keeping in mind that costs include military, medical, and moral costs? Finally, is the deliberative forum appropriate? Military medical ethics entails private (doctor-patient) and public discourse. Public discourse or deliberation engages the political community and its institutions. It requires widespread participation, well-reasoned arguments, reasonable pluralism, and, ultimately, responsive public policy.

“Well, in the case of my mom…”

This article is guided by the question: What are the argumentative functions of personal stories in public deliberations? Drawing on the analytical traditions of argumentation theory and discourse analysis, we analyzed three public forums on mental illness, where personal stories were used in a number of argumentative functions. Our analysis reveals that in a deliberative forum personal stories were used as negotiable arguments rather than as mere assertions of individual experience. Personal stories were primarily used as arguments by example to challenge the framing proposed by the moderator and to pitch problem definitions that participants considered most relevant. In this function, personal stories were alternatively engaged as inductive or abductive arguments by other forum participants. Additionally, personal stories were used to support solution proposals and to uphold social ideals.

Democratic Leadership and Decisions Making on Education in Islamic Perspective

This research aimed to determine democratic leadership and decisions making on education in Islamic perspective at Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Pesantren Anak Sholeh Baitul Qur’an Gontor Ponorogo. This research used descriptive qualitative research with data collection methods through interviews, observations, and documentation, as well as Miles and Hubberman data analysis, including data analysis, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of this research indicate that democratic leadership principal of school and making decisions on education in Islamic perspective at Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Pesantren Anak Sholeh Baitul Qur’an Gontor Ponorogo has been carried out properly in accordance with Quran, in Ash-Shura: verse: 38, which is reflected in every decision. The school principal always decides through a deliberative forum together with the teachers openly, responsively, responsibly, and trustfully, by promoting the principle of togetherness and kindship. ملخص: الهدف من هذا البحث هو معرفة قيادة الديمقراطية ووضع السياسات والقرارات التعليمية علي نظرية الإسلام في المدرسة الابتدائية معهد ولد الصالح بيت القرآن فونوروكو. يستخدم هذا البحث البحث النوعي الوصفي مع أسلوب جمع البيانات من خلال المقابلات والملاحظات والتوثيق، وكذلك استخدام تحليل بيانات على نموذج ميليس وهوبيرمين، الذي يشمل على تحليل البيانات، وعرض البيانات، وأخذ الاستنباط. تشير نتائج هذا البحث إلى أن: قيادة الديمقراطية مدير المدرسة ووضع السياسات والقرارات التعليمية في المدرسة الابتدائية معهد ولد الصالح بيت القرآن فونوروكو، تم تنفيذها بشكل جيد ومناسب بالقرآن في سورة الشورى: الآية ٤٣، ويظهر ذلك عند ما توجد مشكلات التعليم والتربية، فالمدير يحلها دائما من خلال التشاور مع المعلمين منفتحا، ومستجيبا، ومسؤولا، بتقديم مراعاة مبدأ العمل الجماعي والأسري.

The Effects of Mixed Membership in a Deliberative Forum: The Irish Constitutional Convention of 2012–2014

The Constitutional Convention was established by the Irish government in 2012. It was tasked with making recommendations on a number of constitutional reform proposals. As a mini-public, its membership was a mix of 66 citizens (randomly selected) and 33 politicians (self-selected). Its recommendations were debated on the floor of the Irish parliament with three of them leading to constitutional referendums; other recommendations are in the process of being implemented. This article uses data gathered during and after the operation of the Convention to examine this real-world example of a mixed-membership mini-public. The focus is on how the inclusion of politicians may have impacted on the Convention’s mode of operation and/or its outcomes. We find little impact in terms of its operation (e.g. no evidence that politicians dominated the discussions). There is evidence of a slight liberal bias among the politician membership, but this had little effect on the outcomes.

Using a deliberative forum for engaging health system and health plan leaders to prioritize research topics

Background: Including stakeholders in the process and outcomes of comparative effectiveness research (CER) can help ensure that research questions are relevant and findings are communicated to individuals who need them for decision-making. Yet limited strategies are available to assist researchers with stakeholder engagement.While health system leaders’ perspectives are increasingly recognized as valuable for CER planning, their inclusion in the stakeholder pool raises challenges due to differences in culture, training, incentives, priorities and language norms.Objective: To convene and evaluate a deliberative forum for engaging health system leaders and other stakeholders in order to shape health system research priorities for the PaTH Clinical Data Research Network, a member of the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet).Methods: Breakout sessions and large group deliberation solicited diverse perspectives and explored benefits and challenges of different research questions. Topic reframing, narrative integration and dynamic updating techniques facilitated communication across diverse backgrounds. Participants included 29 health system and health plan leaders, clinicians, clinical researchers and patients from the network’s 6 participating health systems. Main measures were audience response system (ARS) polling on general topic preferences and survey data on measures of engagement and deliberation success.Results: A slate of 10 specific research topics was vetted; after deliberation, the group converged to favor the characterization of high utilizers of healthcare. Audience response polling revealed opinion shifts. Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the experience and rated it highly for markers of deliberative quality (e.g., opportunity for active participation and adequate discussion, respect for others’ opinions and awareness of different perspectives). Fifty-four percent noted their views on the issues changed. Most participants learned from the experience (93%) and agreed that the process helped them to empathize with the challenges of others (85%).Conclusions: A deliberation forum can incorporate diverse stakeholders into CER, enabling participants to inform and learn from each other’s perspectives while shaping a person-centered research trajectory.

Does Deliberation Breed an Appetite for Discursive Participation? Assessing the Impact of First-Hand Experience

Various deliberative practices have been argued to constitute viable supplements to traditional representative decision making. At the same time, doubts have been raised as to whether ordinary citizens want to be involved in such demanding forms of political participation. This question has been difficult to resolve since few citizens have had the chance to take part in genuine deliberative practices. For this reason, we examine how participation in a deliberative mini-public affected attitudes towards discursive participation as a supplement to representative decision making. Moreover, we investigate how group composition and individual-level factors affect these developments. Our data come from an experimental deliberative forum on the issue of immigration arranged in Finland in 2012. The results suggest that the participants grew more positive towards the use of deliberative practices regardless of individual socio-demographic resources, whereas the effects of prior political engagement depend on the composition of the group the participants were assigned to.