Introduction One of the most important duties of hospital ethics committees is to provide medical ethics consultation to the staff and patients. This study was conducted with the aim of the needs assessment of the staff for optimal provision of medical ethics consultation services. Materials and methods The data collection tool was a self-administered questionnaire. Hospital managers, chief nursing officers, ward managers, and head nurses of all hospitals affiliated with Tehran and Iran University of Medical Sciences entered the study. The (...) questionnaire together with an invitation letter was sent to the samples. In the next stage, telephone follow-up of the incomplete forms was performed by the research team. Results A total of 448 persons participated in this study (response rate: 54.2%). The mean frequency of the need for ethics consultation in each ward was 5.2 times in the last 3 months with a median of 3. The highest needs for consultation, which were common in all wards, were observed in treatment rejection by the patient, providing necessary information to obtain informed consent and obtaining consent to high risk procedures, conflict between the decisions made by the patient and the family members, decision making for the high risk patient, request for futile or inappropriate treatments, giving bad news, and decision making for the incompetent patient. Conclusion The prevalence of ethical issues in clinical wards is variably high. The ethical issues in the clinical setting are mainly related to respect for the patient’s autonomy and competency for decision making. (shrink)

This article traces the historical becoming of the contemporary supersaturation of images of queer and transgendered Iran through the narrative and tropic devices introduced by filmmakers in the past twenty years. I argue that the censorship code enforced by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is partly responsible for the formation of what has come to be a ubiquitous figure in the New Iranian cinema: the “cross-dressing” or “passing” figure. By performing close readings of Baran and Dokhtaraneh Khorshid—two (...) films that are exemplary of a subgenre organized around the “cross-dressing” or “passing” figure—I identify a “transgender move”: a temporary space of political and agential potential that many spectators—both domestic and diasporic—seek in the post 1990s New Iranian cinema. (shrink)