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)

This article reports the findings of a study into the role of Dutch nurses in the alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention, conducted as part of a study into the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions. A questionnaire survey was carried out using a population of 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The response rate was 82.0%; 78.1% (1179) were suitable for analysis. The results show that in about half (...) of the cases (55.8%) nurses were involved in the decision making by the physician and that nurses were frequently (81.5%) involved in administering the medication. The authors' conclusion is that alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention represents a `grey' area, in which physicians and nurses act on the basis of personal ethical norms rather than legal rules, professional guidelines or shared moral values. (shrink)

This article presents the attitudes of nurses towards three issues concerning their role in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The study was conducted in the Netherlands between January 2001 and August 2004. The results show that less than half (45%) of nurses would be willing to serve on committees reviewing cases of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. More than half of the nurses (58.2%) (...) found it too far-reaching to oblige physicians to consult a nurse in the decision-making process. The majority of the nurses stated that preparing euthanatics (62.9%) and inserting an infusion needle to administer the euthanatics (54.1%) should not be accepted as nursing tasks. The findings are discussed in the context of common practices and policies in the Netherlands, and a recommendation is made not to include these three issues in new regulations on the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

What role do nurses play in euthanasia? How do they experience this role and what should be their ideal role? These are the questions of a study undertaken to gain insight into the role of nurses in euthanasia. Answers to these questions were derived from 20 semistructured in-depth interviews with nurses employed in a Dutch hospital. To make clear the role of nurses in euthanasia, the issue was split up into four phases: observation of a request for euthanasia; decision making; (...) carrying out of the request; and after-care. This article is a brief report on the most important results regarding these four phases. Special attention will be paid to nurses who have conscientious objections. To evaluate the study results, an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of ‘euthanasia’ is of most importance. For that reason, Dutch laws and other regulations concerning euthanasia will be explained. (shrink)

This article presents the attitudes of nurses towards three issues concerning their role in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The study was conducted in the Netherlands between January 2001 and August 2004. The results show that less than half of nurses would be willing to serve on committees reviewing cases of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. More than half of the nurses found it (...) too far-reaching to oblige physicians to consult a nurse in the decision-making process. The majority of the nurses stated that preparing euthanatics and inserting an infusion needle to administer the euthanatics should not be accepted as nursing tasks. The findings are discussed in the context of common practices and policies in the Netherlands, and a recommendation is made not to include these three issues in new regulations on the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs has been a heavily contested issue over the past decade, touching on several issues of responsibility facing the pharmaceutical industry. Much research has been conducted on DTCA, but hardly any studies have discussed this topic from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective. In this article, we use several elements of CSR, emphasising consumer autonomy and safety, to analyse differences in DTCA practices within two different policy contexts, the United States of America and the European (...) Union (EU). Doing so results in an alternative analysis of the struggle between proponents and opponents of DTCA from a CSR perspective, adding an alternative view on this debate. (shrink)

Electronic music is advancing not only in the way it is being used in performance but also in the technological sense, due to software developers advancing the ability of the synthesizer to enable the composer to create newer sounds. The introduction of the amino acid and protein synthesizers from MIT is one such example, along with sampling sounds from interstellar bodies through the process of sonification in order to create presets as additional source material for the composer’s palette. The creative (...) process used in creating electronic music on a tablet computer introduces a new musical instrument to be used in live music performances. The fluidity and immediacy of how electronic sounds can be created with tablet computer synthesizers affords the composer to have a new behavioural sense of using them as a musical instrument that can be played intuitively. Exploring this new interface of musical composition is a subject this article will address as well as the psychological aspects pertaining to how an audience can relate to electronic music as an emerging art form removed from the classical music tradition. It will also discuss how the composer of electronic music can affect the listener’s ability to envision new conceptual landscapes, leading to experiencing new ideas and subjective fields of visionary understandings. The composer’s ability to use conceptual models, which influence the way sounds are made and how those sounds influence the listener’s experience, is an important focus of this article. (shrink)

This article deals with the reframing of the concept of universal mediated communication on a global scale. Subjects include the following: the universe has a conscious force field at all its scales, requiring continuous inter-scale communication of information; the field exhibits distinct electromagnetic frequencies associated with the building blocks of life; and advances in the technology of sound production with electronic synthesizers can be applied to study mechanisms of such universal communication. The question being addressed is how electronic synthesizers can (...) be used to create sonic xenolinguistic expressions when composing with sonified frequencies obtained from bio-organisms, human protein structures, phonemes and various types of interstellar frequencies that include, but are not limited to, gamma bursts, pulsars and neutron stars. The objective is to construct sonic xenolingusitic expressions that can act like feedback loops within the field of consciousness. These sonic expressions can include anomalous cognitive, emotive or spiritual experiences that may be emerging out of the universal field of consciousness in real time. Xenolinguistics is a hypothetical language used to communicate with other sentient beings in the universe. The rationale for composing sonic xenolingustic expressions is the belief that the universe is considered conscious and that there is a field of consciousness existing throughout the universe that in principle is also instrumental in how communication can evolve with extraterrestrials. Outlines of other attempts at extraterrestrial communication by other researchers will be offered based on current literature. The probability that other life forms have established some mode of information exchange that is detectable and that, in return, may be able to create a form of communication to respond will be covered. It is postulated that various energy fields existing before and after the creation of our universe interacted with one another becoming abiotic, and then over time, formed even more complex structures. It is these complex structures that were then able to communicate essential information for maintaining their stability and survivability by using specific signalling frequencies. It is hypothesized that first life in the universe emerged within an already existing field of information and that our consciousness is thereby able to establish communication with other forms of consciousness in the universe. It is on this basis that a novel scientific and philosophical paradigm is considered in which the universe is conceived of as an active information matrix that can entertain potential extraterrestrial communication. In this framework, the present article will offer a new approach to orchestrated electronic sounds as a means to such communication. By integrating quantum physical properties into that sonic framework, a new study emerged on how sonic xenolinguistic elements can be incorporated into electronic composition techniques. This new framework may produce new algorithms for musical expression that not only represent an innovative future of electronic music but may also be crucial in the formulation and induction of new states of consciousness that will enable humankind to directly participate in the further becoming of the universe as a result of the evolution of this universal field of consciousness. (shrink)

This book explores some of Kit Fine's outstanding contributions to logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics, among others. Contributing authors address in-depth issues about truthmaker semantics, counterfactual conditionals, grounding, vagueness, non-classical consequence relations, and arbitrary objects, offering critical reflections and novel research contributions. Each chapter is accompanied by an extensive commentary, in which Kit Fine offers detailed responses to the ideas and themes raised by the contributors. The book includes a brief autobiography and exhaustive list of his (...) publications to this date. This book is of interest to logicians of all stripes and to analytic philosophers more generally. (shrink)

Due to its extraordinary predictive power and the great generality of its mathematical structure, quantum theory is able, at least in principle, to describe all the microscopic and macroscopic properties of the physical world, from the subatomic to the cosmological level. Nevertheless, ever since the Copen hagen and Gottingen schools in 1927 gave it the definitive formu lation, now commonly known as the orthodox interpretation, the theory has suffered from very serious logical and epistemologi cal problems. These shortcomings were immediately (...) pointed out by some of the principal founders themselves of quantum theory, to wit, Planck, Einstein, Ehrenfest, Schrodinger, and de Broglie, and by the philosopher Karl Popper, who assumed a position of radical criticism with regard to the standard formulation of the theory. The aim of the participants in the workshop on Open Questions in Quantum Physics, which was held in Bari (Italy), in the Department of Physics of the University, during May 1983 and whose Proceedings are collected in the present volume, accord ingly was to discuss the formal, the physical and the epistemo logical difficulties of quantum theory in the light of recent crucial developments and to propose some possible resolutions of three basic conceptual dilemmas, which are posed respectively ~: (a) the physical developments of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument and Bell's theorem, i. e. (shrink)

Kit Fine’s contribution to logic is vast and diverse; the chapters in this book deal with a significant part of it. In this introductory chapter, we clarify and contextualize the main themes of Fine’s work that are centre stage in this book, after which we give a summary of each chapter.