Ethical Issues in Healthcare of Persons with Developmental Disabilities

A Threat to Disabled Persons?
On the Genetics Approach to Developmental Disabilities

This essay by Hans S. Reinders explores the claim that the genetics approach to intellectual disability does not imply a negative evaluation of disabled persons because there is a distinction between the person and the condition.

Being Human:
Issues in Sexuality for People with Developmental Disabilities

Discussion of sexuality issues in the lives of persons with developmental disabilities has been neglected by both the general public and professionals for many years. Despite philosophical shifts that have focused on improved community living and quality of life, most people in the field of developmental disabilities have ignored the central issues of sexuality and sexual expression.

My Quality is Not Low!

Proponents of Quality of Life assessment often link QOL with contentment, a fact that many result in interference of the rights of people with disabilities. Instead, the voices of the client, his or her caregivers, and of society at large need to be listened to and respected.

Shared Decision Making: The Ethics of Caring and Best Respect

Making decisions regarding life-sustaining treatments for patients who are severely disabled involves some of the most difficult clinical dilemmas in bioethics. This paper focuses on two aspects of this kind of decision making: 1) accurately determining a mentally disabled patient’s decision-making capacity, and 2) making treatment decisions for patients who have never had or who do not currently have decision-making capacity and have no available surrogate.

Silences by Theodore J. Dibuon, MD

The silences are eloquent…

Russell’s Story

This is an account of how one young man, born with a disability, took control over his own health care decision making.

Research

The Center can support your efforts in protecting human subjects, including service on Institutional Review Boards and non-scientific review panels and learning health system activities.

Moral Distress

Moral Distress in Healthcare
The sense that one’s work may be compromising, or even corrupting, is common, with the experience among nurses especially severe.

Freda’s Wishes
Freda is a 32-year old woman in an advanced stage of multiple sclerosis, no longer able to move independently or to feed herself. Is a feeding tube the answer?

Moral Distress or Moral Comfort
Moral distress in healthcare results from a professional’s inability to provide compassionate care to patients because of individual, organizational, or societal barriers. Research suggests that moral distress is a growing concern among nurses and may be a major reason why nurses leave one job for another or abandon the profession of nursing.

In the Patient’s Best Interest – A Call to Balance
Nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professionals often complain that a loss of freedom or other obstacles hinder their ability to act in the best interest of the patient. These barriers cause professional burnout and moral outrage and may contribute to a migration away from healthcare.

Moral Fatigue – A Nursing Perspective
It seems inevitable that a phenomenon called moral fatigue would be labeled, described, and applied to nurses, whose working environment has more than its share of moral conflicts. This article explores the dimensions of moral distress among nurses and presents moral fatigue as a holistic experience with both personal and institutional consequences.

Virtue, Foible and Practice – Medicine’s Arduous Moral Triad
Moral distress is often discussed as a response to the moral dilemmas that professional and other caregivers encounter in their effort to balance competing moral principles, or to provide care in difficult cases, to difficult patients, in spite of difficult institutional requirements or policy. In this essay, a reforming ER clinician and teaching physician, offers a personal approach to moral distress.

Moral Distress – The Role of Ethics Consultation in the NICU
Moral distress is a common occurrence for individuals involved in the care of critically ill infants. The ability to reason through difficult situations is often complicated by intensely emotional circumstances. Ethics consultation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is a useful tool for caregivers and families who face moral problems.

Organizational Ethics

From Clinical to Organizational Ethics – The Second Stage of the Evolution of Bioethics

Patient Rights and Organization Ethics – The Joint Commission Perspective

Do No Harm

Individuals Bear Responsibility

Organizations, Ethics and Health Care – Building an Ethics Infrastructure for a New Era

The Evolving Health Care Marketplace

Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions – A New Catalyst for Examining Organizational Ethics