Along with the advances in medical technology and the economic development, more terminally ill patients are receiving hospice and palliative care services. Moreover, hospice and palliative care clinicians have been showing considerable interest in studies that aim to improve the quality of said care for patients and their families. Meanwhile, after the government has strengthened its policy to protect research participants, the institutional review boards (IRBs) are more closely examining various ethical issues related to patients' vulnerability when reviewing protocols for hospice and palliative care research. However, terminally ill patients should be provided with guaranteed qualities of hospice and palliative care to improve and maintain their quality of life. To that end, support should be provided for efforts to conduct ethical and safe studies with hospice and palliative care patients. Thus, this review paper proposes ethical guidelines for hospice and palliative care research. The guidelines could be appropriately used as a reference for researchers who should prepare for ethically safe and scientifically valued research protocols and the IRBs that will review the protocols.
Economic Development ; Ethics ; Ethics Committees, Research ; Hospice Care ; Hospices ; Human Experimentation ; Humans ; Palliative Care ; Patient Rights ; Quality of Life ; Terminally Ill

Every year in Korea about 50,000 terminally ill patients pass away in pain and more than 90% of the elderly oppose medical treatment to keep terminally ill patients alive. In medical ethics, the patient's right to self-determination is important, but he or she is unconscious or older and cannot express himself/herself, then his/her family should decide whether or not prolong treatment. From February 4, 2018, Hospice-palliative care and self-determination life sustaining decision-making Act will extend the life of the terminally ill patient. A specialist in the treatment of genitourinary cancer, focuses on prevention and treatment of cancer. However, by understanding this law, including terminology and how to implement of process of decision and stop life-sustaining treatment, a uro-oncologist has to counsel and perform education for terminally ill patients. A revision law has been forwarded to simplify the procedure. The Assembly should make haste with reviewing the law to help reduce the pain of terminally ill patients and their families.
Aged ; Comprehension ; Decision Making ; Education ; Ethics, Medical ; Hospice Care ; Humans ; Jurisprudence ; Korea ; Palliative Care ; Patient Rights ; Specialization ; Terminally Ill ; Urogenital Neoplasms

In the traditional medical field, the patient was a person to receive protection from the doctor because there are vertical relationship between the patient and the doctor. But in modern medical field, patients change their role to health-care consumer to be guaranteed their rights more actively. This study compare patient's rights in doctor's vocational ethics and patient's rights in law, consumer rights. This study analyzes what is type of law-relationship between patients and doctor and how can they act health-care as health-care consumer.
Ethics ; Humans ; Jurisprudence ; Patient Rights*

PURPOSE: This study was done to identify the experiences of ethical issues and needs for ethics education in clinical nurses. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was used and data were collected in 2013. Participants were 428 clinical nurses working in the general units of seven medical hospitals. The Ethical Issues in Clinical Practice Tool was used. Data analysis was performed using SPSS/WIN 19.0. RESULTS: 'Providing care with a possible risk to your health' was the most frequent and disturbing ethical problems for nurses. The highest helpful ethical topic was 'the patients' right, autonomy and informed consent'. The ethical issue experience was significantly different according to education level, work units, and type of employment. The necessity of ethics education was statistically different according to age, religion, level of education, duration of working as RN, position, shift type, and continuing education about nursing ethics. CONCLUSION: The results of this study show that nursing educators need to provide practical ethics education based on frequent ethical issues and helpful education topics. These findings can be used in developing effective education strategies for clinical nurses and nursing organizations to improve nurses' ethical decision-making abilities.
Cross-Sectional Studies ; Education* ; Education, Continuing ; Education, Nursing ; Employment ; Ethics* ; Ethics, Nursing ; Nursing ; Patient Rights ; Statistics as Topic

Attitude to Health ; Civil Defense ; ethics ; Communicable Disease Control ; Communication ; Ethics, Medical ; Freedom ; Health Personnel ; ethics ; Health Planning ; ethics ; Health Priorities ; ethics ; Humans ; Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype ; isolation & purification ; Influenza, Human ; epidemiology ; Mandatory Programs ; ethics ; Moral Obligations ; Pandemics ; ethics ; Patient Rights ; ethics ; Primary Health Care ; ethics ; Public Health ; ethics ; Public Health Administration ; ethics ; Resource Allocation ; ethics ; Singapore ; Trust

The development of life sustaining treatment technology including artificial ventilation has given us the moral problem, considering the human dignity and futility of medical treatment, until when these treatments could be given to terminally ill patients. In Korea, there were two supreme court decisions a significant impacts on the withdrawal of life sustaining treatment. After these decisions, Korean medical society has developed a guideline for advance directives and has also established a voluntary hospital ethics committee. The patient's right of self- determination right and the paternalistic approach of medicine should be balanced at an optimal level, because benefits of medical advances should be adjusted to take into account the burden of life prolongations. Decision making always has been difficult because related to ethical values, and there a broad spectrum of value-laden attitudes within Korean society. The legalization of end-of-life care should be from the respect of the professional autonomy of medical society. Under these considerations, we should supply alternative methods like hospice care, which can help to manage the withdrawal of life support appropriately, and also make an effort to relieve the economical burden of patients.
Advance Directives ; Decision Making ; Ethics Committees ; Ethics Committees, Clinical ; Hospice Care ; Hospices ; Hospitals, Voluntary ; Humans ; Jurisprudence ; Korea ; Medical Futility ; Patient Rights ; Personal Autonomy ; Personhood ; Professional Autonomy ; Societies, Medical ; Supreme Court Decisions ; Terminally Ill ; Ventilation ; Withholding Treatment

Non-disclosure in Paediatric Practice is a controversial issue. There was a time when the care of children was solely the responsibility of parents and any decision with respect to treatment or non-treatment would have been the joint responsibility of the parents and of the attending medical professionals. This practice, viewed as adopting a more paternalistic approach, has been challenged in many parts of the world. In essence what is being challenged is the notion that the sole responsibility of decision-making rests with parents.
Clinical Competence ; Communication ; Decision Making ; Ethics, Medical ; Humans ; Parent-Child Relations ; Patient Rights ; ethics ; Pediatrics ; ethics ; Physician-Patient Relations ; ethics ; Practice Patterns, Physicians' ; Truth Disclosure ; ethics

In medicine, it is the physician's obligation to promote and protect the patient's interest. In obstetrics, the ethical principles of beneficence and autonomy provide the fundamental framework which guides the management of all pregnant patients. As there is the need for consideration of the fetus, autonomy can become a complex issue giving rise to what is sometimes called "maternal-fetal conflict." In this paper, we aim to discuss some scenarios we encounter in our day-to-day obstetric practice such as pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction and labour induction when the best interests of the mother and fetus may be conflicted. We hope to illustrate that logical consideration for maternal and fetal best interests is only possible when there is adequate knowledge to support clinical practice. Certainly, with the rapid availability of newer knowledge and technology, it is the duty of the physician to be educated continuously so as to protect the patient from harm.
Beneficence ; Clinical Competence ; Conflict (Psychology) ; Ethics, Medical ; Female ; Fetal Growth Retardation ; Fetus ; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice ; Humans ; Maternal Welfare ; Maternal-Fetal Relations ; Obstetrics ; ethics ; methods ; Patient Care ; ethics ; Patient Rights ; Personal Autonomy ; Physician-Patient Relations ; ethics ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Complications ; Prenatal Diagnosis

The Chinese medical ethics committee and the ethical review system have made the following achievements: (1) enabled the institutionalization of medical ethics, (2) carried out the ethics review of Chinese medicine (CM) and integrative medicine extensively, (3) trained a large number of ethical professionals, (4) supported and protected the interests of patients and subjects, and (5) ensured the correct direction of biological research and provided ethical defense for the publication of its results. However, at the same time, they are also faced with some new problems and difficulties that need to be resolved in the following ways: (1) to refine the relevant rules of ethical review, (2) to develop the relevant standards of the CM and integrative medicine ethical review, (3) to enhance the independence and authority of ethics committee, (4) to emphasize innovation and to discover and solve new problems, and (5) to increase international exchanges and improve relevant research.
Ethical Review ; Ethics, Medical ; Humans ; Integrative Medicine ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; trends ; Patient Rights

PURPOSE: There is increasing concern about ethical conduct of human research in the field of medicine. The purpose of this study was to assess the ethical review process by institutional review boards for human research articles published in the journal of Korean Society of Emergency Medicine. METHODS: We reviewed human research papers published in the journal of Korean Society of Emergency Medicine from the 1st edition, 1990 to the 6th edition, 2006. A checklist was used to review the articles. RESULTS: The total number of prospective clinical research paper was 250. Among them, there were 63 papers (25.2%) in which the obtaining of informed consent was described in the article. Only two studies (0.8%) published in the journal were noted to have IRB approval. Invasive techniques were employed in 134 studies (53.6%). Among the 134, only 22 (16.4%) mentioned that informed consent taken was given during the study. Studies which may have involved discrimination totaled 21 (8.4%), and the number of studies that may have violated the patients' right to privacy was 20 (8%). The number of studies that may have a conflict of interest but was not declared was 12 (4.8%). CONCLUSION: There should be greater concern about the ethical conduct of research in studies with human research subjects in the journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine.
Bioethics ; Checklist ; Conflict of Interest ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Emergencies ; Emergency Medicine ; Ethical Review ; Ethics Committees, Research ; Helsinki Declaration ; Humans ; Informed Consent ; Patient Rights ; Privacy ; Research Subjects