Background: Some patients are stigmatised as difficult patients by healthcare professionals. This phenomenon has great many negative consequences. The behaviours of healthcare professionals towards difficult patients are important. Objective: To explore the behaviours of all healthcare professionals towards difficult patients. Research Design: This study was based on a cross-sectional research design using structural equation modelling. Participants and Research Context: Two hundred and fifty-four healthcare professionals were involved in the study in Turkey. ‘Participant Information Form’ and the ‘Healthcare Professionals Behaviour Assessment (...) Questionnaire For Difficult Patient’ were used to collect data from participants. Ethical Consideration: Ethical approval was obtained from Gazi University Ethics Committee for the study. Informed consent of the participants in the study was taken and the confidentiality of the participants was ensured. Findings: It was explored that the behaviours of healthcare professionals towards difficult patients were categorised into ethical, supportive and negative. The highest mean score was supportive behaviour and the least mean score was negative. According to structural equation modelling, the most important predictor of difficult encounters was an ethical dimension. One-unit increase in ethical behaviour contributed to 0.92 unit increase in positive patient behaviour. Discussion: Patients generally are perceived as ‘difficult patient’ by the healthcare professionals, so the patients’ treatment and care services are affected negatively due to healthcare professionals’ negative beliefs and attitudes. The healthcare professionals should behave supportively towards difficult patients. Conclusion: Healthcare professionals should be aware of management strategies in dealing with difficult encounters. The behaviours of healthcare professionals should be improved in a positive way and awareness of ethical dimension of difficult encounters should be increased. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between nurses’ ethical decision-making levels and their professional behaviours. Data were collected from 225 nurses who were recruited from university hospitals in Ankara using proportionate sampling. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations. Most of the nurses were familiar with ethical dilemmas in nursing practice. The Nursing Principled Thinking level was above average, while the Practical Consideration level was average. Nurses’ professionalism level was low. There was a positive but weak correlation between professional (...) behaviours of the nurses and their ethical decision-making levels. Increasing nurses’ professionalism level can provide a positive contribution to the ethical decision-making level. (shrink)

Biological racial realism (BRR) continues to be a much-discussed topic, with several recent papers presenting arguments for the plausibility of some type of “biological race.” In this paper, the focus will be on the phylogenetic conceptions of race, which is one of the most promising views of BRR, that define races as lineages of reproductively isolated breeding populations. However, I will argue that phylogenetic conceptions of race fail to prove that races are biologically real. I will develop and defend my (...) argument against the phylogenetic views of race by relying on current research in population genetics, human evolution, and social sciences. Ultimately, I will argue that (i) race is not a biologically legitimate category and (ii) philosophers should direct their resources to understand problems that arise due to racialization, and thereby they should find solutions to those problems. (shrink)

Forms of racial cognition begin early: from about 3 months onwards, many human infants prefer to look at own-race faces over other-race faces. What is not yet fully clear is what the psychological mechanisms are that underlie racial thoughts at this early age, and why these mechanisms evolved. In this paper, we propose answers to these questions. Specifically, we use recent experimental data and evolutionary biological insights to argue that early racial cognition is simply the result of a “facial familiarity (...) mechanism”: a mental structure that leads infants to attend to faces that look similar to familiar faces, and which probably has evolved to track potential caregivers. We further argue that this account can be combined with the major existing treatments of the evolution of racial cognition, which apply to adult humans. The result is a heterogeneous picture of racial thought, according to which early and later racial cognition result from very different psychological mechanisms. (shrink)

Teorisinin menzili isteme olan Schopenhauer, kendi ahlak felsefesinde karakter kavramını geniş bir yelpazede çözümler Schopenhauer’e göre bir kimsenin karakteri doğuştan ve değişmezdir. Kendinde şey olarak benim istemem, akılsal karakterim, bir bütün olarak dünyadan ayrı bir şey değildir ve ona göre, etik karakter farklılığı doğrudan istemeden kaynaklanır. Onun bu konuda karşılaştığı teorik zorluklardan biri istemenin nasıl olur da bu kadar farklı ahlaki karakter türünde nesneleştiğini açıklamaktır. Schopenhauer’ın karakter kavramına ilişkin çözümlemesi, egoizm, kötülük, merhamet (şefkat) ve çilecilik (Askese) ve farklı ahlaki değerlere (...) sahip karakterler arasındaki ahlaki ve mantıksal bağlantılara dair önemli analizler sunar. Bu yazıda, Schopenhauer’in ahlaki karakter gelişimi sergilenecektir. (shrink)

Background: Nurses are in a key position for reproduction health service delivery. Therefore, it is thought that it would be important to inspect opinions of student nurses, who will be health employees in the future, about self-induced abortion to develop women health and public health. Objectives: The goal of this study is to inspect opinions of nursing students with different sociocultural specialties, about self-induced abortions. Research design: It is qualitative type and planned with ethnographic research pattern. Participants and research context: (...) The study was conducted with 20 last-term students of Kırşehir Ahi Evran University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing, who were chosen by maximum diversity sampling technique. Interviews were made with semi-structured interview form and voice records during the study; data were analyzed with content analyzing method. Ethical considerations: Permission from the organization, university ethics committee, and personal approvals were taken from participants to conduct the research. Findings: Based on the analysis, two major themes on self-induced abortion in Turkish nursing students were found: dilemma of traditional perspective and professional identity and occupational awareness. Discussion and conclusion: It is seen that there is a dilemma between traditional point of view and professional identities about self-induced abortion for nursing students, but they had occupational awareness. It should be recommended to give information about national and international licit legislations for reproductive health, self-induced abortion, and setting up ethical discussion environments for nursing students. (shrink)

Aim: This study was carried out in order to determine ethical decision-making levels of oncology nurses. Ethical Consideration: Research Ethics Committee's approval was obtained prior to the data collection. Permission to use the Turkish version of the Nursing Dilemma Test was received from Birgül Cerit. Written approval was taken from school administrators to conduct the study confirming that there were no invasive procedures planned for human beings during the study period. The study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki (...) Declaration. Verbal consent was obtained from each of the nurses who agreed to participate after they were informed about the study content. Method: The population of this study conducted in a descriptive way consisted of a total of 96 nurses working at the oncology units and outpatient chemotherapy units of four different hospitals between September 2017 and March 2018. The study sample included 60 nurses who responded to the question form. The data of the study were collected using “Nurses Information Questionnaire” and “Nursing Dilemma Test” developed by Crisham in 1981. Results: Oncology nurses’ mean scores in Principled Thinking (49.00 ± 6.46) and those in Practical Considerations (18.35 ± 4.47) were found to be above the moderate level. It was determined that the oncology nurses participated in the study were familiar with situations similar to the dilemmas included in the Nursing Dilemma Test (15.00 ± 4.20). Conclusion: It was concluded that oncology nurses try to take ethical principles into consideration but are also affected by environmental factors while making decisions concerning ethical dilemmas. The most frequently encountered ethical dilemmas by oncology nurses include the following: deciding not to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, telling the truth to the patient, studies being carried out without the patient’s content, and patient’s refusal of treatment. In order to improve oncology nurses’ critical thinking and ethical decision-making skills, it is important to determine ethical dilemmas encountered by oncology nurses, and nurses should be encouraged to be involved in ethical decision-making process through cooperation with the other healthcare personnel. (shrink)

What is Kantian epistemology? How can human beings acquire knowledge? A question still seeming to be controversial. Some theorists consider Kant's epistemology as competely outdated. Nevertheless, the dispute about Kant's theory began already when its author was still alive, arising from terms and categories such as 'the thing in itself' ('Ding an sich'), the Synthesis a priori, Kant's concepts of time, space, truth, discernment and others - so there seems to be and urgent need of clarification pointing out critically Kant's (...) theory as well as the history of its impact and reception. Followed by the analysis and valuation of alternative concepts such as idealism, materialism, evolutionary epistemology, ceritical rationalism, radical conctructivism, AI research, and others. Followed by my own cocept of an up-to-date epistemology. (shrink)

The question which I raise in this paper—"Is Science contenporary rationality?"—is entended to place the issue in an historical context.That is to say: rationality has a history. Modem science, I will argue is the dominant contenporary form of this rationality, as a matter of fact. The ceritical question is then: what normative claim does contenporary science make for this dominant position? Can contenporary science be understood as a historical form of rationality which has superseded earlier forms, and which itself has (...) historical limitations? I compare the mathematical model of scientific rationality of seventeenth century science with that of contenporary science, and consider whether there are norms of rationality which remain invariant through historical change. (shrink)