The Costs and Labour of Whistleblowing: Bodily Vulnerability and Post-disclosure Survival

Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical detail on the financial costs of speaking out. To address this, we present findings from a novel empirical study surveying whistleblowers. We demonstrate how whistleblowers who leave their role as a result of speaking out can lose both the financial and temporal resources necessary to redevelop their livelihoods post-disclosure. We also show how associated costs involving significant legal and health expenditure can rise. Based on these insights, our first contribution is to present a new conceptual framing of post-disclosure experiences, drawing on feminist theory, that emphasizes the bodily vulnerability of whistleblowers and their families. Our second contribution repositions whistleblowing as a form of labour defending against precarity, which involves new expenses, takes significant time, and often must be carried out with depleted income. Bringing forth the intersubjective aspect of the whistleblowing experience, our study shows how both the post-disclosure survival of whistleblowers, and their capacity to speak, depend on institutional supports or, in their absence, on personal networks. By reconceptualizing post-disclosure experiences in this way—as material, embodied and intersubjective—practical implications for whistleblower advocacy and policy emerge, alongside contributions to theoretical debates. Reversing typical formulations in business ethics, we turn extant debates on the ethical duty of employees to speak up against wrongdoing on their heads. We argue instead for a responsibility to protect whistleblowers exposed to vulnerability, a duty owed by those upon whose behalf they speak.

Ethical Duty of a Lawyer to Defend His Client in a Criminal Case: Issues and Challenges in India

The fate of a criminal case to a large extent depends upon choosing the right lawyer. But the choice of a right lawyer requires some amount of experience and expertise, which a layman intending to hire a lawyer may not be equipped with. Even if the client has made a smart choice in identifying a right lawyer for him, the lawyer so identified might not be willing to accept a brief for the reasons best known to the lawyer. At times a peculiar situation may arise before the lawyer where the lawyer seeks to withdraw from representing the accused. There are various pitfalls to the client’s right from the stage of making a choice of a competent lawyer to defend the accused up to the end of the legal battle. The article deals with the professional ethics involved when a counsel accepts a brief or seeks to withdraw from representing an accused and terminate the advocate–client relationship.

A Case of Nonsyndromic Craniosynostosis in an Infant Child of Jehovah's Witness Parents: Is Surgical Correction Appropriate?

An infant with nonsyndromic craniosynostosis is brought to clinic by his Jehovah's Witness parents to discuss treatment. Five potential courses of action are discussed in the context of biomedical ethics principles. The potential conflict between parents’ autonomy to make decisions for their child and the surgeon's ethical duty of beneficence to the patient is explored.

Medical Interns’ Perceptions about Disclosing Medical Errors

Background. Honest and timely reporting of medical errors is the professional and ethical duty of any physician as it can help the patients and their families to understand the condition and enable the practitioners to prevent the consequences of the error. This study aims to investigate the viewpoints of medical interns regarding medical error disclosure in educational hospitals in Shiraz, Iran. Methods. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for data collection. The survey consisted of questions about the medical error disclosure, the willingness to disclose an error, the interns’ experiences and intentions of reporting the medical error, and two scenarios to assess the students’ response to a medical error. Results. Medical interns believed that a medical error must be reported for the sake of conscience and commitment and prevention of further consequences. The most important cause of not reporting an error was found to be inappropriate communication skills among the students. The results indicated that the willingness to disclose the hypothetical error among females was more than males (R < 0.005), but in practice, there was no difference between males and females (R > 0.005). The willingness to disclose minor and major hypothetical errors had a positive correlation ( P < 0.001 , R = 0.848). Conclusion. More ethical training and education of communication skills would be helpful to persuade physicians to disclose medical errors.

Addressing Moral Confusion: Ethics Isn’t Law

Moral confusion in business ethics and corporate social responsibility often stems from treating ethics and law as if they were the same. Ethics and the law often overlap and sometimes conflict. They are distinct categories. Laws may enforce people’s ethical obligations. But they may also contravene them and require unethical action. Because the law has no independent moral authority, business people are always required to ask themselves whether compliance with the law is the right course of action. When the law prescribes oppressive or unjust conduct, they may have an ethical duty not to obey the law.

Religion, spirituality, and mental health: Setting the scene

This chapter starts defining spirituality as a transcendent realm of reality, which is considered sacred, and religion as the institutional or communal aspect of that spirituality. Then, it explores whether and how issues relating to religion and spirituality (R/S) are relevant to the mental health of individuals. A large body of evidence is presented and discussed showing that R/S remain and probably will continue to be relevant in the contemporary world, and that R/S have marked and usually positive effects on mental health. Ethical concerns regarding approaching R/S in clinical care are addressed, arguing that this approach must be patient-centred. An evidence-based, and ethically sound, bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach is proposed. In summary, in respect to the evidence available and the R/S beliefs, behaviours and values of most of the world’s population, it is not only appropriate but a scientific and ethical duty to integrate R/S into mental health research, training, prevention, and clinical practice.

Maintaining the security of attorney-client privilege while using modern technologies and electronic devices

The development of digital technologies leads to significant changes in the forms of communication between an attorney and his client, as well as in the procedure and conditions of storing an attorney’s dossier and other information received by an attorney that is a subject of attorney-client privilege. The article is devoted to the problems of maintaining the security of attorney-client privilege in attorney’s work with the confidential information using modern technologies including mobile phones and other technical devices. The author believes that in the digital era attorney should pay increased attention to the problem of interaction with information in electronic form, as well as its transfer and storage to maintain the security of attorney-client privilege. The author notes that training in the issue of interaction with modern technologies is an ethical duty of an attorney, indicates that in order to solve this problem is required the cooperation of bar association with technical specialists in the field of digital technologies is necessary. The main point of the article is to determine the measure of attorney’s reasonableness while storing and transferring confidential information and to develop additional recommendatory measures to protect information being the subject of attorney-client privilege.

Policies and practice in the disclosure of medical error: Insights from leading countries to address the issue in Italy

The relationship between physician and patient has undergone profound changes in recent years. Patients increasingly insist on being thoroughly informed with detailed information about treatments and procedures suggested for their best care. This is also due to the growing suspicion towards doctors and the health-care system in general. Therefore, it is no longer possible to hide a medical error. To satisfy the request for honesty and safety of patients and society, it is necessary to enhance the skills and tools that physicians can use when disclosing and explaining an error to the patient. All modern codes of medical conduct acknowledge the importance of strengthening communication between physician and patient, which is the only way to save a relationship under constant threat of rupture and to improve the quality and safety of the treatment. The disclosure and explanation of the error has become not only an ethical duty but also a prudent way of avoiding negligence lawsuits. In this context, in 2013, Germany approved a law known as Patientenrechtegesetz, which we consider a good compromise between patient expectations and the need for doctors to work without the constant fear of being sued for malpractice. This work seeks to provide an overview of the most important issues pertaining to disclosure of medical error and of practice in other countries, with the aim of offering a contribution to the debate on this subject in Italy.