Background: Older, frail patients with multimorbidity are at an especially high risk for disease severity and death from COVID-19. The social restrictions proved challenging for the residents, their relatives, and the care staff. While these restrictions clearly impacted daily life in Norwegian nursing homes, knowledge about how the pandemic influenced nursing practice is sparse. Aim: The aim of the study was to illuminate ethical difficult situations experienced by Norwegian nurses working in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design and (...) participants: The research design involved semistructured individual interviews conducted with 15 nurses working in 8 nursing homes in 3 health regions in Norway, within both urban and rural areas. Ethical considerations: Oral and written information about the study was provided before the participants gave their written consent. The transcribed interviews were de-identified. The study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Findings: Four ethical difficult situations were identified: (a) turning the nursing home into a prison; (b) using medication to maintain peace and order; (c) being left alone with the responsibility; and (d) s. impact on decision-making. Conclusions: The nurses’ ethical challenges were intertwined with external factors, such as national and local guidelines, and the nurses’ own internalized factors, which were connected to their subjective professionality. This duality inflicted emotional distress and gave nurses few opportunities to perform nursing in a professionally sound and safe manner. (shrink)

Abduction, deduction and induction are different forms of inference in science. However, only a few attempts have been made to introduce the idea of abductive reasoning as an extended way of thinking about clinical practice in nursing research. The aim of this paper was to encourage critical reflections about abductive reasoning based on three empirical examples from nursing research and includes three research questions on what abductive reasoning is, how the process has taken place, and how knowledge about abductive reasoning (...) based on the examples can inform nursing research and clinical practice. The study has a descriptive and explorative approach using a convenience sample of three empirical studies from nursing research. The three studies illustrate different ways to enter the abductive reasoning process in steps. They represent new caring models, which offer visual and cognitive maps for expanding nursing research, education and thus informing care. Therefore, we suggest that abductive reasoning may be beneficial for different ways of knowing and demonstrates scientific innovation to shed new light on health phenomena, which can help researchers and practitioners to gain a broader and deeper understanding of nursing care inquiry. However, more studies are needed to broaden this scope. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Sufism; mysticism; Islam.

Background Conventional consent practices face ethical challenges in continuously evolving digital health environments due to their static, one-time nature. Dynamic consent offers a promising solution, providing adaptability and flexibility to address these ethical concerns. However, due to the immaturity of the concept and accompanying technology, dynamic consent has not yet been widely used in practice. This study aims to identify the facilitators of and barriers to adopting dynamic consent in real-world scenarios. Methods This scoping review, conducted in December 2022, adhered (...) to the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, focusing on dynamic consent within the health domain. A comprehensive search across Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus yielded 22 selected articles based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results The facilitators for the adoption of dynamic consent in digital health ecosystems were the provision of multiple consent modalities, personalized alternatives, continuous communication, and the dissemination of up-to-date information. Nevertheless, several barriers, such as consent fatigue, the digital divide, complexities in system implementation, and privacy and security concerns, needed to be addressed. This study also investigated current technological advancements and suggested considerations for further research aimed at resolving the remaining challenges surrounding dynamic consent. Conclusions Dynamic consent emerges as an ethically advantageous method for digital health ecosystems, driven by its adaptability and support for continuous, two-way communication between data subjects and consumers. Ethical implementation in real-world settings requires the development of a robust technical framework capable of accommodating the diverse needs of stakeholders, thereby ensuring ethical integrity and data privacy in the evolving digital health landscape. (shrink)

Bibliography of Islamic ethics and sufism.

إن السماحة خلق أصـيل في ديننا الحنيف، والتيسير أصل فيه بنصوص القرآن الكريم والسُّنة النبوية المطهَّرة؛ فالسماحة في الشـريعة الإسلامية منهج رباني، ومبدأ من المبادئ التي أكرم الحق سبحانه وتعالى بها عباده، وأمرهم أن يتعاملوا بها فيما بينهم. فالدين كله قائم على اليسـر، والفقه في الدين وفي الأحكام مبنيٌّ على التيسير، ولم يقُل أحد على الإطلاق إن الفقه هو التشدد، غير أننا ابتُلِينا في العقود الماضـية القريبة بأناس جنحوا نحو التطرف والتشدد؛ بحيث صاروا يُسوّقون أن من يحسن التشدد هو العالم (...) الرباني، وأن من يفهم الفقه حقَّ الفهم؛ فييسـر للناس أمور دينهم، هو المنافق الذي لا يُستمَع إليه؛ فهؤلاء هم أجهل الناس، وأبعد ما يكونون عن شـرع الله، عَزَّ وجَلَّ، وهم بذلك منفّرون من دين الله صادُّون عنه. فما قامت - وتقوم به - هذه الجماعات وعناصـرها الضالَّة يصادم صحيح الـشـرع الحنيف ووسطيَّته، ويتطلَّب التعاون في المواجهة الشاملة لتلك الجماعات المنحرفة وأفكارها المتطرفة الشاذة. ونؤكد أننا في حاجة ماسَّة إلى تحويل قيم السماحة والتيسـير إلى واقع ملموس في حياتنا على المستوى الفردي، والمستوى المجتمعي، والمستوى الوطني، والمستوى الإنساني؛ لنكون بحقّ دعاة لديننا بسلوكنا وأخلاقنا أكثر من تنظيرنا وأقوالنا؛ فلا قيمة لأي تنظير لا تطبيق له على أرض الواقع. (shrink)

There is growing concern that decision-making informed by machine learning (ML) algorithms may unfairly discriminate based on personal demographic attributes, such as race and gender. Scholars have responded by introducing numerous mathematical definitions of fairness to test the algorithm, many of which are in conflict with one another. However, these reductionist representations of fairness often bear little resemblance to real-life fairness considerations, which in practice are highly contextual. Moreover, fairness metrics tend to be implemented in narrow and targeted toolkits that (...) are difficult to integrate into an algorithm’s broader ethical assessment. In this paper, we derive lessons from ethical philosophy and welfare economics as they relate to the contextual factors relevant for fairness. In particular we highlight the debate around acceptability of particular inequalities and the inextricable links between fairness, welfare and autonomy. We propose Key Ethics Indicators (KEIs) as a way towards providing a more holistic understanding of whether or not an algorithm is aligned to the decision-maker’s ethical values. (shrink)

The Korean concept of kyoyang conceives different layers of meaning corresponding to the enlightenment and reform project in the early modern and colonial periods of Korean society. This article traces the historical trajectory of kyoyang published in Korean vernacular magazines and newspapers by Korean reformists, the main media intellectuals who appropriated Japanese and Western ideas of enlightenment, nationalism, and culturalism. It reveals the way the reformist media intellectuals employed kyoyang to define the nature of modern print media while simultaneously transforming (...) the concept, providing resources for enlightening the populace. Accordingly, kyoyang, once assumed by a few literary men under the influence of Neo-Confucianism, was shifted to encompass the commoners, envisioning the enlightened national subjects who embody contradictory qualities. (shrink)

To address the rising concern that algorithmic decision-making may reinforce discriminatory biases, researchers have proposed many notions of fairness and corresponding mathematical formalizations. Each of these notions is often presented as a one-size-fits-all, absolute condition; however, in reality, the practical and ethical trade-offs are unavoidable and more complex. We introduce a new approach that considers fairness—not as a binary, absolute mathematical condition—but rather, as a relational notion in comparison to alternative decisionmaking processes. Using US mortgage lending as an example use (...) case, we discuss the ethical foundations of each definition of fairness and demonstrate that our proposed methodology more closely captures the ethical trade-offs of the decision-maker, as well as forcing a more explicit representation of which values and objectives are prioritised. (shrink)

For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have pondered the origins and nature of human intuitions about the properties of points, lines, and figures on the Euclidean plane, with most hypothesizing that a system of Euclidean concepts either is innate or is assembled by general learning processes. Recent research from cognitive and developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology, animal cognition, and cognitive neuroscience suggests a different view. Knowledge of geometry may be founded on at least two distinct, evolutionarily ancient, core cognitive systems for (...) representing the shapes of large-scale, navigable surface layouts and of small-scale, movable forms and objects. Each of these systems applies to some but not all perceptible arrays and captures some but not all of the three fundamental Euclidean relationships of distance (or length), angle, and direction (or sense). Like natural number (Carey, 2009), Euclidean geometry may be constructed through the productive combination of representations from these core systems, through the use of uniquely human symbolic systems. (shrink)

Islamic accountability system as administered in Pakistan.