Caring for unrepresented patients encompasses legal, ethical, and moral challenges regarding decision-making, consent, the patient’s values, wishes, best interest, and the healthcare team’s professional integrity and autonomy. In this article, I consider the impact of the aging population and the effects of the social determinants of health and suggest that without preventive intervention, the number of unrepresented patients will continue to increase. The health, social, and legal risk factors for becoming unrepresented require a multidisciplinary response. Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) bring (...) healthcare and legal professionals together to address risk factors and health-harming legal needs. The article discusses the role of MLPs in identifying at-risk individuals, providing preventive interventions, and providing support. I make recommendations and conclude that proactive MLPs offer a sustainable approach to the ethical challenges in caring for unrepresented patients by providing interventions to prevent individuals from becoming unrepresented. (shrink)

This is the first book published that specifically examines questions of ethics and advocacy that arise in conducting research on homelessness, exploring the issues through the deeply personal experiences of some of the field’s leading scholars. By examining the central queries from a broad range of perspectives, the authors presented here draw upon years of rich investigations to generate a framework that will be instructive for researchers across a wide spectrum of areas of inquiry.

This is the first book published that specifically examines questions of ethics and advocacy that arise in conducting research on homelessness, exploring the issues through the deeply personal experiences of some of the field’s leading scholars. By examining the central queries from a broad range of perspectives, the authors presented here draw upon years of rich investigations to generate a framework that will be instructive for researchers across a wide spectrum of areas of inquiry.

Exploring illusions of control in a wide variety of domains, the authors posit a practical way to minimize negative consequences.

Moments of moral disquiet encounter clock time as well as lived time, and thus professional human practices are existential and take place in time and space. Professional practices as existential involve human bodies and relationships, and are based on trust, responsibility, and vulnerability. The paper explores the relation between lived time and moments of disquiet. We borrow lived experience descriptions from students in professional practices and analyse them phenomenologically. Our informants are students in profession studies of nursing, (...) social work and education interviewed individually in or after external institutional practice during their education. In the interviews they share their experiences of personal responsibility in situations orienting to others in professional practices. As a life existential, time shapes and organises our bodies and activities from birth to grave and is lived and experienced in a variety of ways in daily life and life as such. Time is thus a precondition of human life and life itself. Our interest in this paper is to show and argue phenomenological-pedagogically why and how it is of professional significance to teach students to take the required time to care, and to encourage them to be attentively present in situations when other persons’ lives take place. (shrink)

Despite the undeniable ethical dimensions of paid occupations — trades and services — other than the traditional professions, it is still natural to associate courses of professional ethics with medicine, law, nursing or teaching, rather than auto‐repair, supermarket assistance or window‐cleaning. Indeed, it seems plausible to hold that if there is anything more to the traditional distinction of professions from trades or other services than considerations of social and economic status, it might well reside in the distinctive ethical or (...) moral character and implications of such occupations as medicine, law and education. This paper undertakes to explore, via examination of some of the commonly suggested criteria of professionalism, the nature of such implications and the extent to which they justify continued deployment of a distinctive occupational category of ‘profession’. On the assumption that they do, however, the paper is also concerned to examine critically the consequences for education in professional ethics of any such distinctive ethics of profession. (shrink)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormon Church – upholds a cultural expectation for women of their community to remain unemployed outside the home and to dedicate their early adulthood to bearing and raising children. This paper reports on a phenomenological exploration, using Smith and Osborn’s model of interpretative phenomenological analysis, of the use, as a conflict-controlling strategy, of sanctification, or the sacred aspects of life, in the religious cultural navigation of 16 religious Mormon women who (...) maintain full-time professional careers in the fields of law, medicine, education, science, administration or engineering, and who simultaneously mother one or more children under the age of 12. The findings of this study document significant demographic, values-based and experiential differences between the study participants and their Latter-day Saints peers who live within the subculture’s norm. (shrink)

This book explores a value-based research methodology, Living Educational Theory Research (LETR), which aligns a values-based approach with key tenets of professional development to inform and inspire future educators' practice. Written by the world-leading scholars in the field of LETR, chapters are global in reach and promote the evolving and dynamic nature of the methodology and its application with real-world professional training within higher education. Through discussion and dialogue on the evolution of Living Educational Theory Research, chapters explore (...) topics such as professional development and community-based contexts, supporting academics wishing to improve their practice by placing the theory within a scholarly paradigm to legitimise its use for scholarly learning. Demonstrating how insights from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, and psychology are integrated within the generation of living-educational-theories, this outwardly looking volume will appeal to postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers involved with educational theory, action research and other forms of practitioner research, and education research methods more broadly. (shrink)

Living kidney donation provides a promising opportunity in situations where the scarcity of cadaveric kidneys is widely acknowledged. While many patients and their relatives are willing to accept its benefits, others are concerned about living kidney programs; they appear to feel pressured into accepting living kidney transplantations as the only proper option for them. As we studied the attitudes and views of patients and their relatives, we considered just how actively health care professionals should encourage living donation. We argue that (...) active interference in peoples’ personal lives is justified - if not obligatory. First, we address the ambiguous ideals of non-directivity and value neutrality in counselling. We describe the main pitfalls implied in these concepts, and conclude that these concepts cannot account for the complex reality of living donation and transplantation. We depict what is required instead as truthful information and context-relative counselling. We then consider professional interference into personal belief systems. We argue that individual convictions are not necessarily strong, stable, or deep. They may be flawed in many ways. In order to justify interference in peoples’ personal lives, it is crucial to understand the structure of these convictions. Evidence suggests that both patients and their relatives have attitudes towards living kidney donation that are often open to change and, accordingly, can be influenced. We show how ethical theories can account for this reality and can help us to discern between justified and unjustified interference. We refer to Stephen Toulmin’s model of the structure of logical argument, the Rawlsian model of reflective equilibrium, and Thomas Nagel’s representation of the particularistic position. (shrink)

Malacologists took notice of tree snails in the genus Liguus during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, Liguus have undergone repeated shifts in identity as members of species, states, shell collections, backyard gardens, and engineered wildernesses. To understand what Liguus are, this paper examines snail enthusiasts, collectors, researchers, and conservationists—collectively self-identified as Liggers—in their varied landscapes. I argue that Liguus, both in the scientific imaginary and in the material landscape, mediated knowledge-making processes that circulated among amateur and (...) professional malacologists across the United States and Cuba during the twentieth century. Beginning with an examination of early Liggers’ work in Florida and Cuba, this paper demonstrates how notions of taxonomy and biogeography informed later efforts to understand Liguus hybridization and conservation. A heterogeneous community of Liggers has had varied and at times contradictory commitments informed by shifting physical, social, and scientific landscapes. Genealogizing those commitments illuminates the factors underpinning a decision to undertake the until now little-chronicled large-scale and sustained transplantation of every living Floridian form of Liguus fasciatus into Everglades National Park. The social history of Liggers and Liguus fundamentally blurs distinctions between professional scientists and amateur naturalists. The experiences of a diverse cast of Liggers and their Liguus snails historicize the complex character of human-animal relations and speak to the increasing endangerment of many similarly range-restricted invertebrates. (shrink)

Since online delivery of education has become a major approach to teaching in Open Distance Learning institutions, it becomes critical to understand how academics learn to teach online. This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of academics who had participated in a professional development programme aimed at moving them from traditional distance teaching to online facilitation of learning. Giorgi’s phenomenological psychological method was used to analyse and retrospectively examine the learning experiences of the participant academics in order (...) to establish how they lived, behaved and experienced the training programme. The participants described their experiences in relation to distinct lived worlds that included the world in relation to self, others, time, and their environment. The academics’ experiences and concerns provide insight into their skills development needs and the adequacy of the programme provided in addressing these and equipping academics for online teaching. The perspectives identified could serve to guide the development and promotion of professional development programmes for online teaching and learning. (shrink)

Acceptance of elderly or marginal health individuals as kidney donors is debated, with practices varying between centres. Transplant recipients, live kidney donors and health-care professionals caring for patients with renal failure were surveyed regarding their views on live donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) of marginal health (diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, obesity, etc.) and elderly donors. Participants were recruited within a tertiary renal and transplant centre and invited to participate in focus groups and structured interviews. They also completed an anonymous questionnaire. Of 464 (...) participants who completed the questionnaire (36% health-care professionals and 64% patients), 49% and 64%, respectively, stated that marginal and elderly donors should be accepted for LDKT. In the structured interviews, emphasis was given to presenting to donor, recipient and their respective families a calculated risk regarding the effect that either a nephrectomy or transplant has on long-term quality of life. Participants stated that an independent third party in addition to the transplant team should discuss involved risks. Issues of ‘how desperate’ the recipient's situation is should also be considered. Health-care professionals stated that regardless of the strength of will of an individual to donate a kidney (despite age, health problems or personal risk), they should always have the right to say ‘no’ if performing a specific LDKT was against their professional and ethical values. About half of those surveyed considered that marginal health and elderly donors were acceptable for LDKT. Emphasis was given to the explanation to donors and recipients of the risks involved in such transplantation. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5-38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to (...) Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman's notion of 'moral impulse' to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the 'moral' requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM. (shrink)

Professional Responsibility: New Horizons of Praxis addresses the manifold and complex challenges inherent in professional responsibility. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, professions have been accorded a conjoined mandate - political and moral responsibility - to serve the interests of individual's and society. The quality of professional work, how professionals understand and live out their responsibilities in practice, is a matter of pervasive concern since increasingly they have such a prominent presence in most people's lives. (...) Until the late 1960's, professionals' roles and responsibilities were rarely questioned, but such trust has since given way to collective scepticism concerning their commitment and willingness to live up to their moral and societal obligations. Abuse of power and privilege by some professionals has contributed to decline in trust by publics, the concept of 'good work' is increasingly challenged, and politicians and policy-makers have sought to regulate and hold professions to account. It is timely, therefore, to investigate critically conflicting discourses and practices on what counts as professional responsibility, to question how professionals understand and are prepared for a life of professional responsibility, and what acting with integrity and authority looks like in practice. One of the distinctive features of this book is the combination of normative and empirical dimensions that are used to dissect this question. The authors indicate from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives how professional responsibility includes particular thoughts and warranted actions yet remains multifaceted and inarticulate"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this essay, Elizabeth Campbell reviews three recent books that address the ethical nature of professional practice: Knowledge and Virtue in Teaching and Learning: The Primacy of Dispositions, by Hugh Sockett; The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice, by Chris Higgins; and Towards Professional Wisdom: Practical Deliberation in the People Professions, edited by Liz Bondi, David Carr, Chris Clark, and Cecelia Clegg. While the first two books are situated within the context of teaching and (...) education, the third book, as an edited volume, contains chapters that represent a multidisciplinary perspective on the work of professionals within nursing, social work, counseling, and the ministry, as well as in teaching. Each of the books engages in the careful inquiry into philosophy broadly and educational philosophy specifically from conceptual frameworks widely associated with Aristotelian virtue ethics. Writing from an applied perspective on the field of scholarship relating to the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching, Campbell applauds the books for their timely reminder of the central role or persona of the individual professional as a moral agent and ethical practitioner. She argues that within the contemporary context of teacher education, which tends either to neglect or narrowly define the ethics of the profession, such an emphasis on the cultivation of personal character and responsibility within a framework of clear ethical dispositions or virtues is a welcome contribution to the field. It enables teachers, teacher educators, and student teachers to concentrate on both the ethics of practice and the practice of ethics in the ongoing quest to further their own development of virtue, practical wisdom, and personal and professional knowledge. (shrink)

Background:Professional values improve the quality of nurses’ professional lives, reduce emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, increase personal success, and help to make collaborations with...

It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be critically examined. Lise Vaugeois argues that creating such a framework would enhance their capacity to thrive as musicians and to function responsibly and pro-actively as citizens in a democracy. By exploring issues pertaining to musicians as workers, teachers, and cultural producers, she (...) examines materiality, ideology, and power in the lives of university and conservatory educated musicians. These examples are followed by an introduction to critical pedagogy, in particular, the work of Paulo Freire, and some of the tools and premises critical pedagogy brings to questions raised in the paper. Strategies and resources that could support a shift in the culture of professional music schools conclude the paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the WarYuliya NogovitsynaI live in Kyiv with my husband and two daughters. On 24 February 2022, my husband woke me up at 5 am tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Yulia, wake up. There are bombings outside. The war started”. [End Page 160]That day was our younger daughter’s (...) birthday. She turned six. We had planned a birthday party for her with friends, cake, candles and birthday gifts. Instead, we had to move both daughters to the bathroom where there are no windows so that broken glass did not hurt them if a missile hit.I am the Program Director at Tabletochki Charity Foundation, Ukraine’s largest childhood cancer NGO (https://tabletochki.org/en/). For 11 years before the war, we have been fostering childhood cancer care in Ukraine—through our direct assistance to families, support of pediatric oncology units, professional development of medical personnel, and advocacy.The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 dramatically changed the healthcare system landscape in Ukraine. The physical threat, treatment disruption, exposure of immunosuppressed patients to improper conditions in bomb shelters and cellars, interruption in supplies, infrastructure damage, logistics failure, and funding constraints have been among the most manifested immediate and deferred implications of the war for the health-care system in Ukraine.That said, the biggest professional challenge was uncertainty and inability to plan. You have nothing to rely on in developing at least a short-term strategy. This may sound speculative and unimportant—who bothers about uncertainty when there is a physical threat to your life? But this is a wrong perception—uncertainty paralyzes and disables long before a bullet or missile reaches you.War also brings the collapse of relationships, partnerships, and coalitions. It depletes and limits resources, whether human, financial, or emotional. Scarce resources make hospitals, healthcare professionals, and NGOs compete for patients, donors, and financing. The war and the external threat unite only for a short period of emergency response. Once the situation transitions to a protracted conflict, people and institutions start fighting for their own survival.My family stayed in Ukraine but moved to Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine, which turned into an evacuation hub for children with cancer. More than 1,000 children with cancer were evacuated and referred for treatment abroad through the SAFER Ukraine collaborative initiative by St. Jude Global, Tabletochki, West-Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center (WUSCMC), and other international and local partners.During the first months of the war, we worked hand-in-hand day and night to bring critically ill children to safety and treatment. We sent evacuation convoys from Lviv to Poland twice a week, the largest one with 71 families, included four buses and 11 ambulances. We slept 4-5 hours per day. Within two weeks, my hands and legs were trembling from constant tension, concentration, and tiredness.And even this extremely fast-responding and effective evacuation may be questioned. We have been facing an ethical dilemma—whether the safety needs of the existing patients prevail over the needs of future patients in diagnostics and treatment in Ukraine. We discussed more than once whether we should stop evacuation and referral of children to European hospitals to sustain the Ukrainian childhood cancer care system and prevent it from degradation. It is very uncomfortable to confront such questions. Could our heroic efforts to evacuate as many Ukrainian children with cancer as possible turn into an evil for future patients to come? By evacuating patients, we left pediatric oncology units empty, without work for Ukrainian pediatric oncologists, and the usual pathways for diagnostics and treatment were disrupted. A healthcare system without patients is like a cardiovascular system without blood.My family returned to Kyiv in August 2022 for our daughters to continue their schooling. There were (and still are) only five to seven kids in a class; other children left Ukraine or switched to online studies. My husband and I decided that our children will attend school offline—despite the regular missile attacks. This is a private school; we pay for it. In such a way... (shrink)

Collections of living organisms are reservoirs of biological knowledge that operate across times and places. From the mid-20th century, scientific institutions dedicated to the cultivation of such collections have routinized and professionalized their care. But “care,” for these collections, is focused not just on individual organisms—instead, a principal aim of a curator is to maintain the integrity of a reproducing “strain,” “variety,” “line,” or “stock,” and the composition of a collection as a whole. This paper explores the forms, the material (...) dimensions, the temporalities, and the values of that care, to recover the conditions under which scientist-custodians maintain continuity of research over many decades. This paper does so by focusing on two rather different kinds of scientific collection: that of Drosophila fruit flies on the one hand, and plant seeds on the other. Their comparison is valuable because their vastly different needs and life cycles engender very different practices of care. Comparing the materialities, life cycles, needs, and values of these divergent collections helps to draw attention to the routine and the apparently mundane. First, the paper asks: what kinds of work go into managing such collections—that is, the day-to-day management and cultivation, surveillance, and administration of information? Second, it asks: how do these practices maintain the integrity of the strains and stocks, and the collections themselves? What kinds of value does this work create? Third, what are the future imaginaries that are rhetorically drawn into the funding strategies of these collections, and how do they envision future use, ownership, and control? (shrink)

BackgroundEuthanasia is performed on occasion, even on newborns, but is highly controversial, and it is prohibited by law and condemned by medical ethics in most countries.AimTo characterise and compare the judgments of lay persons, nurses, and physicians of the acceptability of actively ending the life of a damaged newborn.MethodsConvenience samples of 237 lay persons, 214 nurses, and 76 physicians in the south of France rated the acceptability on a scale of 0–10 of giving a lethal injection in 54 scenarios composed (...) of all combinations of 4 within-subject factors: gestational age of 6,7, or 9 months; 3 levels of severity of either perinatal asphyxia or of genetic disease; attitude of the parents about prolonging care unknown, favourable, or unfavourable; and decision made individually by the physician or collectively by the medical team. Overall ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and each cluster to analysis of variance and graphic representation.ResultsLay persons (mean acceptability rating 4.29) were significantly more favourable to euthanasia than nurses (2.84), p<.005, or physicians (2.12), p<.005. Five clusters were found with different judgment rules, i.e., how the information was integrated. More physicians (30 per cent) than nurses (14 per cent), p<.01, or lay persons (11 percent), p<.01, rated euthanasia as never, under any condition, acceptable. Most, however, asserted that it was increasingly acceptable as the factors combined to favour it, especially when the parents desired to stop treatment. More physicians (45 per cent) and nurses (46 per cent) than lay persons (21 per cent), p<.01, used a complex conjunctive rule (level of parent’s attitude x level of severity of damage x consultation with team or not) rather than a simple additive rule.ConclusionsUnlike lawand medical ethics, most of the lay persons. nurses, and physicians judged the acceptability of euthanasia as a function of the circumstances. Most health professionals combined the factors in a conjunctive (multiplicative), rather than additive, fashion in accordance with legislation for adults in the Netherlands and elsewhere that requires a set of criteria to be fulfilled before it is legitimate to end apatient’s life. (shrink)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyse nurses’ professional dignity in their everyday working lives. We explored the factors that affect nursing professional dignity in practice that emerge in relationships with health professionals, among clinical nurses working in hospitals and in community settings in central Italy. The main themes identified were: (i) nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement; (ii) recognition of dignity beyond professional roles. These two concepts are interconnected. This study provides (...) insights into professional dignity in nursing being perceived as an achievement linked to the intrinsic dignity of every human being. The ‘nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement’ was perceived as having declined in different social factors. Some factors of nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement were attained more easily in community settings. ‘Recognition of dignity beyond professional roles’ underpins the intrinsic dignity as an expression of humanity, embedded in persons regardless of any profession, and values, such as: respect, moral integrity, humility, working conscientiously and kindness. (shrink)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyse nurses’ professional dignity in their everyday working lives. We explored the factors that affect nursing professional dignity in practice that emerge in relationships with health professionals, among clinical nurses working in hospitals and in community settings in central Italy. The main themes identified were: (i) nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement; (ii) recognition of dignity beyond professional roles. These two concepts are interconnected. This study provides (...) insights into professional dignity in nursing being perceived as an achievement linked to the intrinsic dignity of every human being. The ‘nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement’ was perceived as having declined in different social factors. Some factors of nursing professional dignity perceived as an achievement were attained more easily in community settings. ‘Recognition of dignity beyond professional roles’ underpins the intrinsic dignity as an expression of humanity, embedded in persons regardless of any profession, and values, such as: respect, moral integrity, humility, working conscientiously and kindness. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential and relevance of an innovative sociological research method known as the Imitation Game for research in health care. Whilst this method and its potential have until recently only been explored within sociology, there are many interesting and promising facets that may render this approach fruitful within the health care field, most notably to questions about the experiential knowledge or ‘expertise’ of chronically ill patients. The Imitation Game can be especially useful because it provides a way (...) to map this experiential knowledge more systematically, without falling in the dual trap of either over-relying on in-depth, but highly specific phenomenological ‘insider’-approaches that are hard to generalize, or, alternatively, problematically reducing the rich life-worlds of patients to a set of indicators in a questionnaire. The main focus of this paper is theoretical and conceptual: explaining the Imitation Game method, discussing its usefulness in the health care domain, and exploring the ways in which the approach can be utilized for chronic illness care. The paper presents both a conceptual and empirical exploration of how the Imitation Game method and its underlying theoretical concepts of ‘contributory expertise’ and ‘interactional expertise’ can be transferred from the sociological realm to the field of health care, what kinds of insights can be gained from the method, which methodological issues it may raise, and what potentially fruitful research routes can be explored. I argue that the Imitation Game can be thought of as a ‘social learning experiment’ that simultaneously enables the participants to learn from each other’s perspectives, allows researchers to explore exciting new possibilities, and also offers the tools to intervene in the practice that is being studied. (shrink)

The Professional Ethics Toolkit is an engaging and accessible guide to the study of moral issues in professional life through the analysis of ethical dilemmas faced by people working in medicine, law, social work, business, and other industries where conflicting interests and ideas complicate professional practice and decision-making. Written by a seasoned ethicist and professional consultant, the volume uses philosophical ideas, theories, and principles to develop and articulate a definitive methodology for ethical decision-making in professional (...) environments. Meyers offers the benefit of his expertise with clear and practical advice at every turn, guiding readers through numerous real-world examples and case studies to illustrate key concepts including role-engendered duties, conflicts of interest, competency, and the principles that underpin and define professionalism itself. Following the format of The Philosopher’s Toolkit, The Professional Ethics Toolkit is an essential companion to the study of professional ethics for use in both the classroom and the working world, encouraging students and general readers alike to think critically and engage intelligently with ethics in their professional lives. (shrink)

Background:Human health is dependent upon environmental sustainability. Many have argued that environmental sustainability advocacy and environmentally responsible healthcare practice are imperative healthcare actions.Research questions:What are the key obstacles to healthcare professionals supporting environmental sustainability? How may these obstacles be overcome?Research design:Data-driven thematic qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews identified common and pertinent themes, and differences between specific healthcare disciplines.Participants:A total of 64 healthcare professionals and academics from all states and territories of Australia, and multiple healthcare disciplines were recruited.Ethical considerations:Institutional ethics approval (...) was obtained for data collection. Participants gave informed consent. All data were de-identified to protect participant anonymity.Findings:Qualitative analysis indicated that Australian healthcare professionals often take more action in their personal than professional lives to protect the environment, particularly those with strong professional identities. The healthcare sector’s focus on economic rationalism was a substantial barrier to environmentally responsible behaviour. Professionals also feared conflict and professional ostracism, and often did not feel qualified to take action. This led to healthcare professionals making inconsistent moral judgements, and feeling silenced and powerless. Constraints on non-clinical employees within and beyond the sector exacerbated these difficulties.Discussion:The findings are consistent with the literature reporting that organisational constraints, and strong social identification, can inhibit actions that align with personal values. This disparity can cause moral distress and residue, leading to feelings of powerlessness, resulting in less ethical behaviour.Conclusion:The data highlight a disparity between personal and professional actions to address environmental sustainability. Given the constraints Australian healthcare professionals encounter, they are unlikely to shift to environmentally responsible practice without support from institutions and professional associations. Professional development is required to support this endeavour. The poor transference of pro-ecological behaviour from one setting to another is likely to have international implications for healthcare practice. (shrink)

Over the past few years, the business world has been wracked by corporate scandals. With news of a new scandal an almost weekly occurrence, one cannot help but wonder: “Is business success synonymous with a lack of morality?” With a resounding “no,” Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy, former partner at Morgan Stanley, shows that ethical business leadership is possible and, moreover, desirable. Seeking inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, such as Dante, Kant, and Peter Drucker, and drawing from his own (...) career as a successful investment banker, the author examines how business leaders—and those who aspire to be business leaders—can flourish in a corporate environment without shedding personal values or compromising integrity. Living Into Leadership: A Journey in Ethics is based on the author’s actual life experiences, personal ethical dilemmas, and concerns. This groundbreaking work incorporates classroom materials developed by the author for ethics programs at various business schools, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California, UCLA, and Notre Dame. The central question this book considers is how to pursue an engaged business career while living a balanced life and continuing to grow as an integrated person. McCoy acts as a “mentor” for readers, providing personal and professional guidance on the development of a personal business plan for life. The book presents the case for creating a moral compass that allows one to make decisions under uncertainty, lead a life of integrity, establish the practice of ethics both personally and in society, and know when to embrace change and when to hold one’s ground. It includes an abbreviated version of the author’s acclaimed work, the seminal Harvard Business Review article, “The Parable of the Sadhu,” and shows readers how to prepare in advance for dilemmas they may face, both in their private and professional lives. (shrink)

Justice requires that public policy improve the lives of disadvantaged members of society. Dementia is a source of disadvantage, and a growing global public health challenge. This article examines the theoretical and ethical connections between theories of justice and public dementia policy. Disability in general, and dementia in particular, poses important challenges for theories of justice, especially social contract theories. First, the article argues that non-contractarian accounts of justice such as the Capabilities and Disadvantage approaches are better equipped than (...) their contractarian counterparts to analyse issues of justice and dementia. Secondly, using a capabilities framework, I analyse original empirical data from qualitative interviews and discussion groups with health and social care professionals. The article concludes that social connection is a ‘fertile functioning’—a multiplier of advantage that enables people to live well with dementia together—and should therefore be a priority for public dementia policy. (shrink)

ArgumentThe administration of mountain expeditions from the ground created special managerial problems. The Harvard College Observatory's Boyden Expeditions of 1887–1890 sent men and materiel to three sites: Pike's Peak, Colorado; Mount Wilson, California; and Chosica, Peru. Their goal was to test sites in order to find a suitable site for a permanent Boyden station to conduct astrophysical work in service of Harvard's preexisting projects. The logistical difficulties of living on the mountainside combined with the organizational difficulties of administrating a station (...) at a distance. The men who lived on the mountain were professionally vulnerable, and often cut off from their home observatory both by the weather conditions at their own altitude and local politics on the ground below them. Only when an unbroken line of communication could be established between the mountain station and the Harvard Observatory could the astronomers on both ends work together to create a successful expedition. (shrink)

This study analyses the attitudes of university students towards unethical behaviour in the individual and organisational environments, and relates these attitudes to tolerance of corruption in their future professional lives. The results show a positive relationship between attitudes towards unethical behaviour in both environments, as well as tolerance towards acts of corruption, based on a virtual perception survey. Despite the general rejection attitude by students of such behaviour and acts, the rejection diminishes as their degree programme progresses. This (...) study contributes to our understanding of the tolerance of university students towards corruption, and to revealing how this attitude could explain tolerance towards this phenomenon in their future professional lives. (shrink)

This chapter offers a rough sketch of the history and sociology of public philosophy. For philosophy, the crucial historical period of professionalization in the US is roughly 1865–1920 and slightly earlier than that for Germany and some other European countries. The chapter discusses the pre‐disciplinary hodgepodge of philosophy and its public nature. Around the time of the founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1900, William James lamented the barriers being erected between the new disciplines of philosophy and psychology as (...) well as the growing distance between knowledge workers and lived experiences in real social contexts. The process of professionalization can become counterproductive: a dynamic often described as professional deformation. Criticisms of professionalization never entirely went away, but they were confined to the margins of the growing disciplinary matrix. The chapter considers attempts to theorize and practice new relationships between philosophy and various publics, given the institutional and social characteristics of the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

Background: Professional commitment is an important factor in employee performance. COVID-19 outbreak has seriously affected the nurses working conditions. Numerous factors can affect nurses' professional commitment in this situation. Aim: To explore the nurses' lived experiences, attitudes, views and perceptions toward professional commitment and factors affecting it in the Covid-19 crisis. Method, Setting and Participants: This qualitative study was conducted using phenomenological approach and content analysis method. Twenty-five nurses were interviewed using semi structured in-depth interviews. Conventional content (...) analysis was used to analyze collected data. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. Results: Five themes were extracted as follows: “Collaborative empathetic commitment”, “Loyal commitment”, “Sacrificial commitment”, “Commitment with doubt and concern” and “humanistic commitment”. Discussion and Conclusion: The Covid-19 crisis has caused major changes in nurses' working conditions, which have also affected the concept of professional commitment to the nursing profession and revealed new concepts. Identifying internal and external factors that can enhance nurses' commitment to the profession in critical situations such as the Covid-19 outback is of particular importance. (shrink)

Here's a lively look at the forces that have shaped the nursing profession and those that are likely to do so in the future. The book explores the evolution of nursing, historically and theoretically, and examines the impact of reform, the legal system, and politics today.

Moral agency is an important constituent of the nursing role. We explored issues of ethical development in Greek nursing students during clinical practice at the beginning of their studies. Specifically, we aimed to explore students’ lived experience of ethics, and their perceptions and understanding of encountered ethical conflicts through phenomenological analysis of written narratives. The process of developing an awareness of personal values through empathizing with patients was identified as the core theme of the students’ experience. Six more common themes (...) were identified. Development of the students’ moral awareness was conceptualized as a set of stages, commencing with empathizing with patients and nurses, moving on to taking a moral stand and, finally, concluding by becoming aware of their personal values and showing evidence of an emerging professional moral personhood. The notions of empathy, caring and emotion were in evidence throughout the students’ experience. Implications for practice and nurse education are discussed. (shrink)

Ten years ago there was little talk about adding “professionalism” to the medical curriculum. Educators seemed to believe that professionalism was like the studs of a building—the occupants assume them to be present, supporting and defining the space in which they live or work, but no one talks much about them. Similarly, educators assumed that professional values would just “happen,” as trainees spent years working with mentors and role models, as had presumably been the case in the past. To (...) continue the metaphor, when educators did discuss ethics and values, they tended to focus more on external building codes than on the nature of construction materials. Building codes are designed to ensure the public's safety by establishing procedures and standards. Likewise, the “new” bioethics of autonomy and informed consent that entered the medical curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s was oriented primarily toward protecting human rights by codification. In fact, educators explicitly warned students against acting on their personal or professional values in a misguided way—that is, in the absence of adequate ethical constraints, a type of behavior that came to be labeled, pejoratively, as paternalism. (shrink)

How can boards be confident that their organisation is living up to its ethical values and commitments?This report provides a practical framework for approaching the assurance of ethical performance against an organisation's own code of ethics.It is addressed to those at board level overseeing assurance that ethical values are embedded, that commitments are being met and management processes are effective. It will assist assurance professionals seeking to broaden their understanding of non-financial issues and is intended as an aid to the (...) development of good practice. (shrink)

Professional caregivers who work with the trauma and suffering of others, such as doctors, nurses and psychologists, may face significant challenges along with the risk of adverse, long-term mental and physical health problems. Caregivers with responsibility for dependants outside their professional work reported more stress. This finding is of particular relevance in respect of caregivers in under-developed countries such as Zimbabwe, where many households have taken in additional children who have been orphaned, whose parents are ill, or whose (...) parents have temporarily gone elsewhere in search of work. For the purposes of the study, a qualitative phenomenological research design was selected as appropriate to the focus on human experience. An interpretative approach was adopted to explore and explicate the lived experiences of the participants and the meaning they attached to them. The major sources of stress for professional caregivers emerged as being resource constraints, interpersonal issues, and personal issues. Factors found to promote coping include the caregiver’s meaning making perspective, making a difference, and constructing a sense of personal control. (shrink)