Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

Hannah James makes a persuasive case for the use of donated bodies and body parts in surgical training, enabling high fidelity training, improved competency of surgeons and reduced risk of harm to patients from trainees ‘learning on the job’.1 She also identifies some pertinent ethical questions that arise from this practice that should be considered by training organisations, regulatory authorities and the trainees themselves. Many countries throughout the world have regulated programmes, governed by strict ethical principles, for donating bodies, usually (...) to academic institutions for the purposes of medical education.2 In the UK the Human Tissue Authority sets out guiding principles for institutions licensed to handle human tissue including donation of bodies for anatomical examination, education and research; consent, dignity, quality, and honesty and openness.3 The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, in its 2011 report, Human Bodies: donation for medicine and research, identified a number of relevant ethical values including autonomy, altruism, justice, dignity, reciprocity, maximising welfare, and honesty and respect.4 While this report did not focus specifically on donation of human tissue for education and training the principles identified are equally relevant in this context. In terms of maximising welfare whole body donation for education and training provides benefit to many patients over a relatively short time frame …. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to add to the research surrounding nurses' work in hospitals. Throughout history, nurses have faced adverse working conditions, an aspect of their work that remains remarkably unchanged today. Prevailing historical ideologies and sociopolitical conditions influences the context of nurses' work in contemporary hospitals. This research revealed how ruling patriarchal power and nurses' altruistic ways normalize the conditions in hospitals as nurses' work. Moving discourses further add to the work of nurses in hospitals. For example, (...) cost containment strategies, overcapacity and short staffing have resulted in practices to accommodate these problems. While contemporary hospitals may look different, clearly, inside, little has changed since the early days; hospital issues have clearly become an ordinary part of nurses' work. This article discusses how the conditions in hospitals have become an ordinary part of nurses' work. The research in this article emphasizes how prevailing ideologies and institutional discourses make invisible and taken‐for‐granted, how this normalizing of nurses' work contributes to sustaining the hospital's power. (shrink)

L'article met en cause l'efficacité des différentes machines à communiquer dans la mesure où elles ne sont pas centrées sur les besoins humains. D'où le paradoxe d'un lien social effiloché, voire détruit, au fur et à mesure que les outils techniques se multiplient. Les fractures sociales ainsi engendrées se rencontrent en Amérique latine où l'identité culturelle issue des luttes coloniales se heurte de plein fouet aux structures verticales à sens unique des dispositifs de communication. Mais la déchirure s'observe aussi en (...) Europe, où l'on rencontre l'«illectronisme» dans toutes les classes sociales. S'observe aussi une montée des « suspicions » envers les contenus diffusés dont l'authenticité et la neutralité sont mises en doute.The article calls into question the effectiveness of different communication devices insofar as they are not focused on human needs. Hence the paradox of social bonds frayed or destroyed, as and as technical tools multiply. Social divisions thus generated is found in Latin America where cultural identity after colonial struggles collides with vertical structures-way communication devices. But tearing is also observed in Europe, where we meet the "illectronisme" in all social classes. Is also observed a rise in "suspicions" to broadcasting content whose authenticity and neutrality are in doubt. (shrink)

Artiklen præsenterer i første del det pædagogiske stof fra Platons Staten og Lovene, som Rousseau har læst og fundet inspiration i. Der plæderes for, at Rousseau optager og transponerer såvel principper som konkrete overvejelser uanset den forskelige historiske kontekst og de dermed sammenhængende forskellige udformninger og mål for opdragelsen. I anden del diskuteres Rousseaus ’platonisme’ i mere overordnet filosofisk sammenhæng, og der argumenteres for, at Rousseaus utraditionelle, pædagogisk-filosofiske Platon-læsning dels kan ses at fremdrage underbelyste centrale tematikker i Platons filosofi, dels (...) understreger deres stadige aktualitet. (shrink)

La reconnaissance du Ressuscité sur le chemin d’Emmaüs est explicitement associée à l’intelligence des Écritures. Jésus se révèle dans le reparcours de « toutes les Écritures ». P. L. choisit de vérifier cette proposition à travers une relecture des livres de Samuel. Il montre comment l’histoire mouvementée des débuts de la royauté modèle l’espérance et commence à fixer les traits du messie, qui trouveront en Jésus leur accomplissement. Sans ignorer l’approche historique et critique, l’auteur s’applique avant tout à identifier la (...) production du sens dans l’épaisseur du texte. Les premiers rôles du récit sont interrogés, mais tout autant les rôles secondaires, en particulier féminins. L’option de fond est que Dieu se révèle de manière privilégiée dans les gestes de la vie ordinaire, dans la « chair », avec sa dimension d’universalité. Ainsi espérance messianique et accomplissement des Écritures acquièrent-ils une consistance non seulement historique, mais anthropologique. (shrink)

_From a renowned foreign-policy expert, a new paradigm for strategy in the twenty-first century_ In 1961, Thomas Schelling’s _The Strategy of Conflict_ used game theory to radically reenvision the U.S.-Soviet relationship and establish the basis of international relations for the rest of the Cold War. Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter—one of _Foreign Policy’_s Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning—applies network theory to develop a (...) new set of strategies for the post-Cold War world. While chessboard-style competitive relationships still exist—U.S.-Iranian relations, for example—many other situations demand that we look not at individual entities but at their links to one another. We must learn to understand, shape, and build on those connections. Concise and accessible, based on real-world situations, on a lucid understanding of network science, and on a clear taxonomy of strategies, this will be a go-to resource for anyone looking for a new way to think about strategy in politics or business. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore three autobiographical narratives that Plato’s Socrates tells: his report of his conversations with Diotima, his account of his testing of the Delphic oracle, and his description of his turn from naturalistic philosophy to his own method of inquiry.1 This Platonic Socrates shows his auditors how to philosophize for the future through a narrative recollection of his own past. In these stories, Plato presents us with an image of a Socrates who prepares others to do philosophy (...) without him. In doing so, Plato’s Socrates exhibits philosophical care for his students. In the first part of the paper, I briefly discuss Socrates’ overall narrative style as Plato depicts it in the five dialogues that Socrates narrates. I then analyze each of these autobiographical accounts with an eye toward uncovering what they reveal about Plato’s presentation of Socrates’ philosophical practice.2 Finally, I offer a brief description of what it might mean to practice philosophy as care for self and care for others in a Socratic fashion. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the Apology, Plato’s Socrates tells the Athenian jurors that he has spent his life trying to persuade his fellow citizens “not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he him...

Ce colloque devenu livre comble une lacune. Alors que le sujet a été labouré pour le xviiie siècle, aucune synthèse n’existait jusque-là sur le mariage dans la littérature du xixe siècle. Or, la rupture avec les Lumières est frappante comme l’attestent, par exemple, les réécritures d’Inès de Castro étudiées par Maurizio Melai. Le thème du « mariage interdit », inspiré par la tragédie d’Houdar de la Motte (1723) mais subverti un siècle plus tard, illustre le passage de l’Ancien Régime aristocr...

This paper forms part of a wider study examining the history and sociology of nursing education in England between 1860 and 1948. It argues that the question of whether nursing was an art, science and/or social science has been at die ‘heart’ of a wider debate on die occupational status and disciplinary identity of nursing. The view that nursing was essentially an art and a ‘calling’, was championed by Florence Nightingale. Ethel Bedford Fenwick and her allies insisted that nursing, like (...) other professions, was a ‘scientific’ and technical enterprise. Social scientists later came to challenge nursing's claim to professionalism by analysing nursing work first within die context of industrial psychology. But they also advocated a rapprochement between nursing, health services and social science research, a challenge which we are in nursing, still striving to meet This paper argues for a strong coalition of nursing with its former nineteenth century ally, social science, in die continuing struggle for change within nursing and health care policy. Rather than searching for some rarified and purified essence of nursing knowledge, it argues that nurses need to join forces with sociologists and economists in striving to shape die agenda for health services research and provide die evidential basis for health policy transformation more generally. (shrink)

This paper incorporates the work that Jeffrey Gold, Jim Robinson, and Jonathan Schonsheck have done into an innovative method for teaching Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The method involves breaking students into small groups and asking them to draw three images that depict the plot of the Allegory of the Cave. In addition to giving a description of this activity and detailing the pedagogical benefits, the paper considers possible objections to this exercise and suggests that this method provides a model (...) that can be used to teach other highly descriptive images that are found in philosophical texts. (shrink)

A virtue centred approach to ethics has been criticized for being vague owing to the nature of its central concept, the paradigm person. From the perspective of the practitioner the most damaging charge is that virtue ethics fails to be action guiding and, in addition to this, it does not offer any means of act appraisal. These criticisms leave virtue ethics in a weak position vis-à-vis traditional approaches to ethics. The criticism is, however, challenged by Hursthouse in her analysis of (...) the accounts of right action offered by deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. It is possible to defend the action guiding nature of virtue ethics: there are virtue rules and exemplars to guide action. Insights from Aristotle’s practical approach to ethics are considered alongside Hursthouse’s analysis and it is suggested that virtue ethics is also capable of facilitating action appraisal. It is at the same time acknowledged that approaches to virtue ethics vary widely and that the challenges offered here would be rejected by those who embrace a radical replacement virtue approach. (shrink)

La ratification à l'Unesco de la Convention sur la diversité des expressions culturelles se heurte, dans son application, aux changements du modèle qui a présidé à son élaboration. L'actualité immédiate révèle l'affrontement entre des logiques identitaires et la tentation économique de la mondialisation, ainsi que la complexité des mouvements migratoires. Toutes les sociétés deviennent multiculturelles, induisant un nouveau champ pour les chercheurs comme pour les décideurs.The ratification of the UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions faces in its application (...) to changes in the model that led to its development. The news immediately reveals the clash between logical identity and the temptation of economic globalization and the complexity of migration. All societies become multicultural, inducing a new field for researchers and policymakers alike. (shrink)