Research indicates the essentiality of dignity as a vital component for quality of life, reconfirming the emphasis on dignity preservation in the international code of nursing ethics. Applying Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnography, the aim of the study was to develop a theory model by synthesizing 10 qualitative articles from various cultural contexts, exploring nurse and allied healthcare professional perception/practice concerning dignity-preserving dementia care. “Advocating the person’s autonomy and integrity,” which involves “having compassion for the person,” “confirming the person’s worthiness and (...) sense of self,” and “creating a humane and purposeful environment,” was identified as a primary foundation for dignity-preserving dementia care. “Balancing individual choices among persons no longer able to make sound decisions, against the duty of making choices on behalf of the person,” which involves “persuasion” and/or “mild restraint,” was considered a crucial aspect in certain situations. “Sheltering human worth—remembering those who forget” was identified as a comprehensive motive and core value within dignity-preserving dementia care. (shrink)

Background:Dignity experience in the daily lives of people living with dementia is influenced by their relational interactions with others. However, literature reviews show that knowledge concerning crucial interactional qualities, preserving their sense of dignity, is limited.Aim:The aim of this study was to explore and describe crucial qualities of relational interactions preserving dignity experience among people with dementia, while interacting with family, social network, and healthcare professionals.Methodology:The study was founded upon Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and an exploratory design employing qualitative research interviews (...) was conducted.Participants and research context:A total of 11 individuals diagnosed with mild to moderate dementia, living in their own homes, were recruited from two Hospital Memory Clinics in Norway.Ethical considerations:In recruiting persons with dementia as study participants, sensitivity toward their life history, autonomy, integrity, relationships, and dignity is essential. These standards, and the ethical principles of moral sensitivity to their vulnerability, doing no harm, showing justice, and respecting their personal utility, guided our research.Results:Three main interactional qualities preserving the participants’ dignity experience were found: Experiencing love and confirmation; experiencing social inclusion and fellowship; experiencing humane warmth and understanding within a caring culture, while being met as an equal human being. A total of 10 sub-qualities were identified within these 3 main qualities.Discussion and final considerations:Dignity experience among the participants was preserved when certain interactional qualities were present in their interactions with family, social network, and healthcare professionals. While supporting some of the findings of previous studies, this study adds new knowledge on the subject. Knowledge of relational interactions toward preserving dignity experience should be a fundamental part of future dementia care practice. Based on the results of this study, an empirical–theoretical model was developed for this purpose. (shrink)

In the pursuit of a dramaturgy of telematics as a compositional practice, the author builds a position on technology as externalized technique, develops a dramaturgic strategy with notions of an extended theatre practice and reports on a realized telematized performance where a practical implementation was explored. The theatrical site is viewed as a construct of attention, generated by the performers through the performance composition. The composition determines the audience experience, orchestrated by how the construction of the site manages their perspectives, (...) and how the performers are situated in the consciousness site of the audience. In the performed event the performers articulate as a collective extended entity, incorporating the transformation of the performance site via the articulation strategies implemented in the staging. Telematics is argued to be a technology facilitating specific modes of thinking, generating specific modes of actions and presence, which enable new performance sites and new modes of situating performance. (shrink)

New results in ergodic theory show that averages of repeated measurements will typically diverge with probability one if there are random errors in the measurement of time. Since mean-square convergence of the averages is not so susceptible to these anomalies, we are led again to compare the mean and pointwise ergodic theorems and to reconsider efforts to determine properties of a stochastic process from the study of a generic sample path. There are also implications for models of time and the (...) interaction between observer and observable. (shrink)

Advances in medical technology raise new ethical and legal questions which are in turn forcing a reassessment of medical practices and the goals of legislation. This book pays close attention to these questions, bringing together leading scholars to explore a range of topics in this wide ranging collection covering persistent vegetative state, control of fertility, reproductive technologies and the autonomy in the context of medical research practice.

Wrongful birth actions aim to compensate litigants who are negligently deprived by health professionals of their right to reproductive choice. Access to safe and legal abortion is integral to the action and wrongful birth claims in the United Kingdom have been facilitated by the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended). The recent Australian case CES v Superclinics (1995) 38 NSWLR 47 shows how judicial confusion about the legality of abortion can result in judges condoning medical negligence. The Superclinics case also suggests (...) that doctors are not required to provide pregnant women with the same standard of care as other patients. These developments show that law can become incoherent and health professionals can act negligently with impunity when reproductive choice does not have a secure legal foundation. (shrink)

It is suggested how one can imaginatively use a design strategy utilizing performers as tools in the creation of augmented, performative artwork. In order to establish meaningful constructions of performative and augmentative technology, one can use the formal methodologies of advanced formal body language as a tool in the creation process, and thereby have ‘the actual experience’ present in the process as a monitor and a constructive tool. To use a human being as a design tool is a method that (...) uses the skilled performer as a ‘super-’ or ‘extra-’ human tool to investigate through action and analysis. It is a way to test how realities occur under fluid and dynamic conditions within a controlled environment of time and space. This ‘technical’ use of the body as an extra-human behavioural entity, involves the total complex spectrum of intellect, emotions, desires, memory, actions, etc. as a formalized ‘machine’. (shrink)

An oft-quoted Hadith purports that it is incumbent upon every Muslim to seek knowledge, even if it is to be found as far away as China.1 However, the plethora of knowledge that was discovered there generally has yet to be unraveled by Western academics. If the intellectual tradition of Chinese Muslims may appear to be of minor consequence to the larger field of Islamic studies, this is in part because of our failure to assess their influence. The abundant resources for (...) understanding the Islamic sciences in China have barely been grazed and are awaiting our thorough analytical peregrination. This essay attempts to evaluate (1) the most recent work that explores this intellectual tradition, The Sage Learning of Liu .. (shrink)