Background: Issues concerning legislation and regulation with respect to the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide gave the Minister for Health reason to commission a study of the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions in hospitals, home care and nursing homes.Aim: This paper reports the findings of a study of the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, conducted as part of a study of the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions. The findings for hospitals, (...) home care and nursing homes are described and compared.Method: A questionnaire was sent to 1509 nurses, employed in 73 hospitals, 55 home care organisations and 63 nursing homes. 1179 responses were suitable for analysis. The questionnaire was pilot-tested among 106 nurses, with a response rate of 85%.Results: In 37.0% of cases, the nurse was the first person with whom patients discussed their request for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. Consultation between physicians and nurses during the decision-making process took place quite often in hospitals and nursing homes and less frequently in home care situations . In some cases , nurses administered the euthanatics.Conclusions: The results show substantial differences between the intramural sector and the extramural sector , which are probably linked to the organisational structure of the institutions. Consultation between physicians and nurses during the decision-making process needs improvement, particularly in home care. Some nurses had administered euthanatics, although this task is by law exclusively reserved to physicians. (shrink)

In the article these are considered ethical and legal problems caused by the ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus disease. New challenges for health care, economy, education not only revealed rather a high level of stability and mobility, but also showed a poor readiness of response to sudden risks, which had a certain impact on all spheres of life of the whole society. The authors have conducted a brief cross-cultural analysis of the issue basing on data quoted by the international (...) network of UNESCO chairs in bioethics, sessions of the Bioethics Committee within the RF Commission on UNESCO affairs, as well as official open sources of the health care system and judicial sphere of the Russian Federation. Strong reciprocal link of legal risks in the interdisciplinary field of medicine and law are made discernable: on the one hand, introduction of sanitary and hygienic regulations are aimed at the realization of the right of protecting the health, while on the other hand they represent a violation of basic human rights. Besides the theoretical approach to the problem of the observance of the constitutional rights of citizens in the pandemic conditions there exists a real threat of their violation due to absence of special mechanisms of their realization in frames of sanitary and hygienic measures with regard to the vulnerable and socially disadvantaged sections in the society. It is made conclusion about necessity of the international collaboration for the purpose of joint decision-making and action in the sphere of health care taking into account an international character of ethical and legal challenges triggered by COVID-19 pandemic, as well as national, economic, cultural and confessional peculiarities. (shrink)

The article is devoted to dynamic processes in the field of artificial intelligence, namely in the tasks of neurodynamics. The problems of stability of transient processes in neural networks, which dynamics can be described by systems of weakly nonlinear difference equations, are considered. Conditions are formulated in terms of the direct Lyapunov method.

Gender is known to be a term used to define the sociocultural form of the existence of gender: man and woman act not as natural definitions but as sociocultural phenomena. If gender is determined on the basis of physical, organic and psychophysiological characteristics, then, unlike it, gender is derived from the social, cultural and historical features of human being. Human behavior in society and how it is perceived in it and defines gender as a social gender. Gender is thus one (...) of the ways of social stratification of a society that, in combination with such socio-demographic factors as race, nationality, class, age, organizes the system of social hierarchy. Because gender is not a natural thing but a social construct, it implies self-awareness and self-determination. Gender has always been and remains a meaningful term. In the social sciences, "gender" has become more narrowly defined, denoting "social gender", that is, socially determined roles, identities and spheres of activity of men and women, which depend not on biological sexual differences, but on the social organization of society. Central to gender studies is the problem of social inequality between men and women. (shrink)

Violence is a natural human state, a natural means of communication between one individual and another and it will remain so as long as society is in the stage of its "animal" evolution, as long as man in the mass remains, as Nietzsche put it, a "superchimpanzee." Violence is natural, and goodness and altruism are artificial; one must make a great effort to be good. To be good is an art. There are no laws that make us love one another. (...) But there are laws according to which we must fear or hate, or try to subjugate others. These are the laws of nature. (shrink)