Medical paternalism or parental autonomy in decision making : a Portuguese study in premature newborns

Health care providers and parents may have distinctive roles in the decision-making process regarding the care and treatment of premature babies. In this paper, we explore the process of decision making among doctors, nurses, and parents in premature care units (neonatal intensive care unites, NICUs) located in the central region of Portugal. Forty-one semistructured interviews with doctors, nurses, and mothers were conducted and analyzed. There is evidence that the medical teams provide a considerable amount of information to parents of premature babies, although sometimes unfavorable prognostic data are omitted. Mothers showed a high degree of confidence in the skill and knowledge of the medical professionals and accepted the latter’s role in making decisions regarding the care and treatment of their premature babies. Only when invasive procedures or surgery were serious possibilities was something resembling written informed consent obtained. Ethics committees were seldom consulted. The results show that in the region surveyed, parents neither are invited nor appear to demand a role in making medical decisions that affect their babies. No conflicts between medical providers and parents were detected, suggesting that informed consent and the participation of parents in medical decisions regarding the care and treatment of their babies are not considered necessary or useful in this particular area by the respective parties, in contrast with the tenets of autonomy-based ethics

Uma medicina para a nova década

Uma olhar sobre os factores politicas que podem determinar as políticas de saúde e a sustentantibilidade do Sistema de Saúde na próxima década, uma reflexão sobre os valores éticos que devem nortear a prática clínica do futuro

Doença mental: um desafio e uma esperança

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Desafios postos pela vulnerabilidade aos pesquisadores

This study discusses vulnerability by analyzing it from the point of view of the actions of healthcare professionals and researchers. Consider professional education as a factor that produces and leads to vulnerability, discussing subjective aspects of power relations between researchers and subjects of research and also calling attention to the aspects related to professional ethics, as well as to the related behavior characterized by its absence and legalism.Este trabalho discute a vulnerabilidade analisando-a a partir da ação de profissionais do campo da saúde e pesquisadores. Considera a formação do profissional como um fator que produz e induz à vulnerabilidade, discutindo aspectos subjetivos das relações de poder entre pesquisadores e sujeitos de pesquisa, dando ênfase àqueles relacionados à ética profissional, ao comportamento omisso e legalista

7th International Conference on Ethics Education: Conference Proceedings

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Getting the whole picture: High content screening using three-dimensional cellular model systems and whole animal assays

Phenotypic or High Content Screening (HCS) is becoming more widely used for primary screening campaigns in drug discovery. Currently the vast majority of HCS campaigns are using cell lines grown in well-established monolayer cultures (2D tissue culture). There is widespread recognition that the more biologically relevant 3D tissue culture technologies such as spheroids and organoids and even whole animal assays will eventually be run as primary HCS. Upgrading the IT infrastructure to cope with the increase in data volumes requires investments in hardware (and software) and this will be manageable. However, the main bottleneck for the effective adoption and use of 3D tissue culture and whole animal assays in HCS is anticipated to be the development of software for the analysis of 3D images. In this review we summarize the current state of the available software and how they may be applied to analyzing 3D images obtained from a HCS campaign