Best practice statement : use of ankle-foot orthoses following stroke

NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHSQIS) leads the use of knowledge to promote improvement in the quality of health care for the people of Scotland and performs three key functions. It provides advice and guidance on effective clinical practice, including setting standards; drives and supports implementation of improvements in quality, and assessing the performance of the NHS, reporting and publishing findings

Annotated Bibliography of Ethical Issues in Physics: Physicists as Advisors to Society and Leaders

During the last century, physicists have provided advice to society at large on critical issues. These references explore both the history of this advice and ethical standards that apply to those giving advice

What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Administrative Oversight and the Courts of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 111th Cong., May 13, 2009 (Statement of David Luban, Prof. of Law, Geo. U. L. Center)

The mission of the Office of Legal Counsel is to give the President advice to guide him in fulfilling an awesome constitutional obligation: to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Faithful execution means interpreting the law without stretching it and without looking for loopholes. OLC\u27s job is not to rubber-stamp administration policies, and it is not to provide legal cover for illegal actions. Unfortunately, the interrogation memos fall far short of professional standards of candid advice and independent judgment. They involve a selective and in places deeply eccentric reading of the law. The memos cherry-pick sources of law that back their conclusions, and leave out sources of law that do not. They read as if they were reverse engineered to reach a pre-determined outcome: approval of waterboarding and the other CIA techniques

Defining Fiduciary : Differences in Fiduciary Standards within the Securities Industry

Investment professionals are subject to varying standards of conduct when providing advice to clients. The standards range from providing advice which is suitable to acting consistently with a fiduciary standard. The article provides a brief history of the applicable securities statutes governing investment advice. It discusses the differences in the enactment of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. Next, the article discusses how each statute has impacted the standards applicable to brokers and investment advisers. Investment advisers are deemed fiduciaries. Brokers are held to the “suitability” standard, unless the broker is exercising discretion over client funds or there exist other special circumstances. In those cases, brokers are considered fiduciaries as well. Finally, both investment advisers and brokers may be considered fiduciaries when providing investment advice in connection with retirement assets

National Institute for Clinical Excellence and its value judgments

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) offers health professionals in England and Wales advice on providing NHS patients with the highest attainable standards of care. NICE gives guidance on individual health technologies, the management of specific conditions, and the safety and efficacy of interventional diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Guidance is based on the best available evidence. The evidence may not, however, be very good and is rarely complete. Those responsible for formulating the NICE’s advice therefore have to make judgments both about what is good and bad in the available science (scientific value judgments) and about what is good for society (social value judgments). In this article we focus on the scientific and social judgments forming the crux of the institute’s assessment of cost effectiveness. Scientific value judgments and those relating to clinical effectiveness are considered elsewhere

Pros and Cons of Linking Trade and Labor Standards

This paper addresses the debate over whether labor standards ought to be linked to trade policy, specifically by being included in the World Trade Organization and becoming subject to trade sanctions. We first try to put the debate into context by reviewing the issues and the events that have led to the current situation. We next turn to the arguments in favor of putting labor standards into the WTO, then address the arguments against doing so. Finally we offer our own advice to developing countries as to the position that they should take in this debate, and how more broadly they should deal with this and other issues in multilateral trade negotiations.Labor Standards

Statutory guidance on induction for newly qualified teachers in England

"Statutory induction is the bridge between initial teacher training and a career in teaching. It combines a personalised programme of development, support and professional dialogue, with monitoring and an assessment of performance against the core standards... This guidance explains the provisions of the 2008 regulations [Education (Induction Arrangements for School Teachers) (England) Regulations 2008], which come into effect on 1 September 2008 and provides further advice to help individuals to comply with the regulations. " - pp. 1-2