The COVID‐19 pandemic has placed extraordinary stress on frontline healthcare providers as they encounter significant challenges and risks while caring for patients at the bedside. This study used qualitative research methods to explore nurses and respiratory therapists' experiences providing direct care to COVID‐19 patients during the first surge of the pandemic at a large academic medical center in the Northeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to explore their experiences as related to changes in staffing models and to (...) consider needs for additional support. Twenty semi‐structured interviews were conducted with sixteen nurses and four respiratory therapists via Zoom or by telephone. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, identifiers were removed, and data was coded and analyzed thematically. Five major themes characterize providers' experiences: a fear of the unknown, concerns about infection, perceived professional unpreparedness, isolation and alienation, and inescapable stress and distress. This manuscript analyzes the relationship between these themes and the concept of moral distress and finds that some, but not all, of the challenges that providers faced during this time align with previous definitions of the concept. This points to the possibility of broadening the conceptual parameters of moral distress to account for providers' experiences of treating patients with novel illnesses while encountering institutional and clinical challenges. (shrink)

This edited collection recalls the events that led up to the Fitzgerald Inquiry and examines the extraordinary influence the ‘watershed' inquiry has had on police and public sector reform at the state, national and international levels.

In their article “Racial Justice Requires Ending the War on Drugs,” Earp, Lewis, and Hart argue for the end of our War on Drugs in order to alleviate our reliance on mass incarceration, harm...

Lewis S. Feuer shows that the gestation of the hypotheses of original-minded scientists, such as Darwin, Einstein, or Bohr, is in large part a subconscious process. Scientists try to project upon the world structural laws that, beside fitting the given physical realities, will also realize their own emotional longings among alternative worldviews. Repeatedly, too, in examining the standpoints of philosophical figures ranging from Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, and Mill to contemporary figures such as Einstein, Lovejoy, and Hook, Feuer illumines how (...) sociological antipathies project themselves into scientific divergences. Feuer delves into the bearing of emotive beliefs such as pacifism, socialism, anti-Semitism, upon the formation of concurrent worldviews, often fixations of scientific belief, held with the same passion in science as in religion. (shrink)

Although death by neurologic criteria is legally recognized throughout the United States, state laws and clinical practice vary concerning three key issues: the medical standards used to determine death by neurologic criteria, management of family objections before determination of death by neurologic criteria, and management of religious objections to declaration of death by neurologic criteria. The American Academy of Neurology and other medical stakeholder organizations involved in the determination of death by neurologic criteria have undertaken concerted action to address variation (...) in clinical practice in order to ensure the integrity of brain death determination. To complement this effort, state policymakers must revise legislation on the use of neurologic criteria to declare death. We review the legal history and current laws regarding neurologic criteria to declare death and offer proposed revisions to the Uniform Determination of Death Act and the rationale for these recommendations. (shrink)

Eric Lewis - God and Reason in the Middle Ages - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 393-394 Book Review God and Reason in the Middle Ages Edward Grant. God and Reason in the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. ix + 397. Cloth, $64.95. Paper, $22.95. History has not been kind to the vast era we call the "Middle Ages." The name designates an intellectual hiatus between the (...) philosophical and technical genius of ancient Greece and Rome and the "rebirth" of knowledge in the Renaissance. Edward Grant wants this to change. He suggests that we consider the period following the establishment of scholasticism until the sixteenth century the pinnacle of an "Age of Reason." In this vein, Grant's latest book is pure apologetics for the Middle Ages. Grant.. (shrink)

Hermann Grassmann's Ausdehnungslehre of 1844 and his Lehrbuch der Arithmetik of 1861 are landmark works in mathematics; the former not only developed new mathematical fields but also both contributed to the setting of modern standards of rigor. Their very modernity, however, may obscure features of Grassmann's view of the foundations of mathematics that were not adopted since. Grassmann gave a key role to the learning of mathematics that affected his method of presentation, including his emphasis on making initial assumptions explicit. (...) In order to better understand this less well-known aspect of his work it will help to examine why some commentators have overlooked his theme of unifying logic, pedagogy and foundations, while others have recognised it. (shrink)

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In “Non-Rigid Forms” I characterized possibilities as indefinite forms, in contrast to the definite forms (eternal objects) of actualities. This did not do justice to the atemporality of eternal objects. Indefinite forms ought to be construed as dense clusters of eternal objects. By progressive definition God specifies relevant possibilities to the occasion, which determines one to become actual.

In the initial wave of the opioid crisis, uninformed prescribing practices and lax oversight were the drivers of opioid addiction and death. Although opioid prescriptions have decreased by 44.4 percent between 2011-2020,1 the number of deaths linked to prescription opioids has decreased only marginally.2 The marked fall in opioid prescribing without a concomitant reduction in opioid-related deaths suggests that an at-risk population continued to receive prescription opioids, whether directly or indirectly, from a medical professional. Currently, illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) is (...) the culprit for the majority of the approximately 81,000 annual opioid-related deaths.3 This finding has been misleadingly used to suggest that prescription opioids for chronic pain are no longer (and never were) a relevant concern,4 while the reality is that their lethal consequences are simply dwarfed by the marked rise in IMF deaths.5. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of activism on a large, powerful corporation in Tasmania. Gunns Ltd was a large woodchip processor in Tasmania that fought a long-running battle with environmental activists regarding Gunns’ logging and processing activities. The study focuses on events in 2004–2005, when Gunns applied to build a pulp mill in rural northern Tasmania and began a legal case against activists. The research question is whether there is clear statistical evidence that these events were important, as is widely (...) believed, in the ultimate failure of Gunns in, just 6 years after being the largest and one of the most financially successful Tasmanian companies. We use a mixed methods approach that combines a detailed narrative informed by theory, to examine issues of corporate social responsibility and ethical behaviour, with an econometric time series analysis of the impact of activism on the market value of Gunns. Our analysis supports the contention that the events in 2004–2005 played a significant part in the decline of the long-run market value of Gunns over the subsequent period, through to its failure in 2011. We discuss the underlying causes for Gunns’ failure in terms of agency, stakeholder, legitimacy and leadership theories. Research frequently assesses effects such as those in the Gunns’ case through solely qualitative means. This paper integrates a quantitative analysis into a detailed qualitative narrative and theoretical interpretation of events, to provide additional precision to its findings. It contributes to research in CSR and the impact of activism. (shrink)

It is easy to dispose of the historical aspect of this question. When Aristotle affirmed that the family is more natural than the State, in the sense of original rather than final or necessary, and taught his contemporaries to regard the State as the result of a gradual development through the family and the tribe, he adopted a viewpoint which would probably find universal endorsement to-day. Only a particularly perverse writer would endeavour to revive the controversy as to whether or (...) not the institution of the State began with explicit resolutions concluded at a specific date. No doubt there are plentiful instances of the establishment of particular States through some agreement or contract on the part of its members. The case of the Pilgrim Fathers is often cited as a classical example. But this does not give us an original contract. We should seek one in vain. (shrink)