In palliative and hospice practice, health care professionals frequently faced ethical challenges related to end-of-life care. The complexities of patient care in the hospice and palliative care setting mandated a shift from healthcare professionals operating in “silo” to embracing an interprofessional team-based approach. However, ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts within the interprofessional team and between the professional and patient family may arise, due to different perspectives about the patient's best interest. This paper utilized the Walker and Avant's (2011) concept analysis process in which the concept of interprofessional ethical reflective practice was developed. Adopting the analysis methodology from Walker and Avant (2011), this paper defined the concept and related concepts, attributes, antecedents, consequences, model case, borderline case and opposite case to describe the concept of interprofessional ethical reflective practice. The concept proposed a cyclical approach for interprofessional ethical reflective practice which includes three phases, pre-ethical situation reflection, intra-ethical situation reflection and post-ethical situation reflection. This concept allowed for the significance of interprofessional ethical reflective practice to become apparent, guiding healthcare professionals to navigate through ethical dilemmas with awareness, sensitivity, collaboration, and an attitude of commitment to upholding the ethical care principles in palliative and hospice care.

The road to publication can seem long and daunting. Further, access to published work is often limited to larger institutions that can afford expensive journal subscription fees. Gold open-access publications aimed to change the landscape of evidence-based science, allowing papers to be widely accessible without a subscription, often requiring an article processing fee paid by the author or institution. Regardless of the access model, reputable journals are expected to adhere to the publishing code of ethics and provide transparency in the peer review process. While the latter can significantly increase the length of processing time through multiple revisions, editors and peer reviewers provide expert opinions and valuable feedback, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the journal and the scientific process.
Publishing ; Codes of Ethics ; Feedback

The "new engineering" concept requires that in addition to laying a solid professional foundation, engineering colleges and universities in China should also pay attention to improving the humanistic quality and developing a professional ethics education in training the engineering and technical talents. One important way is to carry out the engineering ethics education. By referring to the mature case-teaching ideas around the world and combining the practical experience accumulated in recent years, this paper focuses on the curriculum development and teaching reform of engineering ethics for students studying biological and medical engineering, from the perspectives of case selection and teaching method innovation. It also introduces some typical case studies, and summarizes the teaching effect analyzed from questionnaire.
Humans ; Curriculum ; Engineering/education* ; Students ; Ethics, Professional ; Biology/education*

Anatomic pathology is a field that relies on visual examination to provide diagnosis. Photos of specimens and microscopic slides play an important role in pathology education. With the internet, sharing and seeing images from different patient cases has become efficient and accessible. However, ethical concerns may be raised since patient images are used for academic purposes in a public setting. Proper de-identification, informed consent and setting professional guidelines for sharing pathology images are suggested.
Pathology ; Social Media ; Ethics ; Policy

Introduction: Access to appropriate and timely care underpins the Republic Act 9707 or the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening and Intervention Act of 2009. However, less than 10% of babies born every year have been screened for hearing loss. The Hearing for Life (HeLe) research program aims to increase the rate of newborn hearing screening (NHS) nationwide through the development and deployment of novel digital health or eHealth technologies in government rural primary care health centers (PCHC). The HeLe is also built on the global call for increased and systematic use of eHealth to strengthen health systems. Effectiveness of eHealth innovations requires acknowledgment of the product’s life cycle; one consideration is organizational readiness at this development stage of the HeLe. Objective: This study assessed readiness of the eight PCHC selected to use the HeLe technologies. Methods: This research utilized the Khoja-Durrani-Scott (KDS) eHealth evaluation tool to assess the PCHC’s readiness level prior to the implementation of HeLe. The KDS tool was distributed through a self-administered survey; data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Readiness is measured in terms of seven dimensions or outcomes resulting from the use of the HeLe technologies. Results: The study revealed that the eight PCHC were most to least ready, in decreasing order, in the following areas: Ethical, Health, Technology, Social & Cultural, Readiness & Change Management, as well as Economic, and Policy outcomes. The study affirms the PCHCs’ value for equity in health care, i.e., providing accessible NHS services in the community setting closest to where the families and their newborns are. Likewise, results confirm the PCHC staff’s preparedness for another set of innovations, through agreement with statements on Technology, Social & Cultural as well as Readiness & Change Management parameters. Conclusions The results informed the training and technical support strategies to be implemented by the HeLe program proponents. However, even in this early development phase of the HeLe technologies, the PCHC are already concerned with how to sustain NHS services after the research. Fully aware that the HeLe ICT tools need to be maintained and upgraded, the PCHC views that economic and policy support should also be in place to ensure continuous delivery of the ICT-enabled NHS services. While results are illustrative, usefulness is limited by the small sample size and character of the study sites. Nevertheless, social dimensions still have to be carefully considered as innovative NHS tools are introduced to primary care health workers nationwide. Researchers have to be deliberate in working with broader health systems and policy advocacy efforts to allow novel NHS technologies to be smoothly introduced at the community level and frontlines of care.
Telemedicine ; Health ; Technology ; Change Management ; Policy ; Ethics ; Primary Health Care

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the reasons behind the “resistance” of higher education institutions (HEIs) located in the south Manila area in creating research ethics committees (RECs). It also examined the proportion of researches in these HEIs with human participation. Methods: Research directors underwent key informant interviews while faculty researchers participated in focus group discussions. Universal sampling was employed on all researches in the schools to determine the proportion with human participants and to know if they are ethically “high risk“ or “low risk” in terms of the participants’ involvement. Results: We included ten higher education institutions in this study. Research directors and faculty researchers agreed that their school should have a REC and that studies should undergo ethical evaluation before commencement of data collection. Half of all researches were found to have human participant involvement and, after developing a tool to determine the risk level to participants, this study found that ethically high risk researches are found to represent 10% as a proportion of the total researches done in the schools. Conclusion Almost all respondents in this study agreed that RECs should be created; however, there are financial challenges that schools face in establishing RECs.
Ethics Committees

Altruism ; COVID-19/epidemiology* ; Delivery of Health Care/ethics* ; Empathy ; Ethics, Medical ; Global Health ; Humans ; International Cooperation ; Physicians ; World Health Organization

Clinical practice of Medical Genetics involves application of various genetic techniques for the diagnosis of genetic disorders and subsequent genetic counseling and treatment. The principles of Medical Ethics must be fully taken into account when applying genetic knowledge for medical practice. Medical Ethics education is therefore essential for the standardized training of resident doctors in medical genetics department. With a basic system of Medical Genetics Physician Training established, our hospital has made a preliminary exploration for the development of Medical Ethics teaching in resident training through various teaching practices including seminar, network teaching, case study, scene teaching and outpatient teaching, with an aim to strengthen Medical Ethnics knowledge, professionalism and communication skills, and implement Medical Ethics principles throughout clinical practice.
Curriculum ; Educational Status ; Ethics, Medical ; Genetics, Medical ; Humans

As qualitative researchers, we are actively involved in the research process. We accept the fact that we are the main instrument, thus are part of the social world we aim to understand. It entails self-awareness and as Parahoo (2006) posits, reflexivity, as a process, is an introspection on the role of subjectivity in the research that entails a continuous process of reflection by researchers on their values. It is also a process of recognizing, examining, and understanding how their “social background, location, and assumptions affect their research practice” Hesse-Biber, 2007, p.17). Reflexivity, as the abundant literature would indicate, is an elusive term, it is commonly used interchangeably with reflectivity, and even with critical reflection. In this paper, an attempt was made to rediscover how reflexivity has been utilized in various perspectives to define its position and role in the conduct of robust qualitative research. In the process, we would like to share and solicit perspectives on reflexivity as a process and as an output. This was done thru a review of literature and the integration and highlighting of reflexivity/reflexivities of various researchers arising from the various research that we have been involved with such as: the six-country multi-disciplinary team lead by the Ottawa University based in Canada that undertook participatory research across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific to learn how poverty can be defined and measured; the five-country multi-disciplinary team, led by the Australian National University, Australia; and various local interdisciplinary researches. These researches were conducted over three years or more, some in various stages using focused group interviews, key informant interviews, observations, ladder ranking using photographs, record reviews, surveys, and photovoice. We also included documented reflexivities of colleagues with whom we have worked with in various capacities. We analyzed these documents vis-à-vis the concern of the qualitative researcher to unravel how their personhood intersects with their experiences in the field. Indeed, revisiting reflexivity and research methods enlightens the rigor in traversing the pathways of knowledge generation in qualitative research.
Research Design ; Ethics

In this epoch of progress in health care, when systematic generation of knowledge is considered the cornerstone of health development, there is increasing focus on the need to demonstrate the ethicalness of doing research. Stories of harm inflicted on research participants and scientific misconduct in research are rife in the history of science, even within our immediate past.1 The lessons that we have learned from these stories have shaped the ethical research guidelines that we abide by and uphold today.2 3 Within the last 15 years, since the creation of the Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB) as the country's policy-making body on research ethics, numerous mandates have been issued to ensure human research participant protection and research integrity. Taken together, these mandates push for the ethical review of researches that are proposed to be done among humans or to use human data, the establishment of research ethics committees (RECs) in institutions that produce these researches, and the maintenance of quality standards in the operation of these RECs through accreditation by the PHREB.4 The enactment of Republic Act No. 10532 in 2013, formally institutionalized the Philippine National Health Research System and tied up all these mandates that pertain to research ethics.5 In effect, all institutions that generate human research一hospitals, health facilities, pharmaceutical companies, government and private agencies, universities, colleges, and even high schools一are expected to comply with these mandates. Many institutions that produce research involving humans or human data find it very challenging to set up a series of procedures for the review of these researches. For one, submitting research protocols一after they have gone through several revisions as directed by the technical research committee or panel一to a second committee for ethics review, approval, and implementation monitoring is a relatively new practice. The extra layer of scrutiny, the intellectual disagreements of technical committees and RECs, and the additional time and effort it takes to get an REC approval all figure in the arguments of those who are against the ethics review process. Research offices or training committees may have to put a system in place to incentivize submission or discourage non-submission of research protocols for ethics review. All in all, it takes administrative political will to incorporate a procedural pathway to ethics review into the usual research generation procedures of an institution. The institutions can arrange a mechanism for external ethics committees or, more commonly一and indeed more efficiently一they can create their own in-house RECs. The demands related to the establishment and operation of in-house RECs constitute an altogether different set of challenges for the institution. REC members and staff will have to be trained to competently do ethics reviews and perform administrative tasks within the REC office. There is also the difficulty of coming up with a good roster of trained reviewers who can dedicate time for committee work. The institution will also have to allocate physical space, and finance both the cost of REC operations and the remuneration of office personnel. The REC accreditation process is meant to reduce variation of procedures and maintain the quality of operations by way of recommending certain standards in the structures, processes, and outputs of RECs. On the part of PHREB as the accrediting body, the process requires careful organization of a well-trained accreditation team that can efficiently and scrupulously evaluate the REC operations and produce helpful recommendations. The process is inherently challenging for REC managers as well since, most of the time, it requires meticulous (re)engineering of REC operations. Above all these demands in complying with the mandates on research ethics is the pervasive call for us to generate trustworthy research results in ways that are beneficial and non-harmful to humans. An ethically produced piece of knowledge is a valuable contribution to scientific progress.
Ethics, Research