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This paper aims to avail a soft approach to embracing the process of creating a business code of conduct and ethics and make it work for a pharmaceutical company [player] which wants to remain relevant before stakeholders and society, amidst escalating inducements to go against the acceptable pharmaceutical behaviour.

Data collection was guided by qualitative methodologies. A four stepwise process was followed: data collection at the case company – Kampala Pharmaceutical Industries (KPI), Uganda; validation of data collected at KPI; data collection from external stakeholders of KPI; and re-validation of KPI data based on data collected from external stakeholders. In all this, combination of semi-structured and informal interviews with CEOs, senior staff managers, non-participant observation of ethical related activities plus organizing a stakeholder engagement workshop on business code of conduct and ethics was achieved. This workshop helped document what ought to be an ideal design process to secure stakeholder buy-in of the code of business ethics. A local pharmaceutical company in Uganda, KPI was used, which, for continuous five years since its adoption of the business code of conduct and ethics, registered commercial viability without any record of unethical practices. Triangulation was used to ensure credibility and validity of the results. For data analysis, a three-stepwise process was followed, which helped develop a framework within which the collected data revealed themes which were later analyzed. For generalization of the findings, the “adaptive theory approach” was used.

When poorly introduced in an organization, the business code of conduct and ethics can work against the company simply because it will be received with “intentional rebellion” from stakeholders, notably staff. However, when a soft stakeholder engagement and consultative approach is used and followed during the business code of ethics and conduct’s design process, multiple stakeholders feel proud and are much willing to live by the promise spelt out in it. Cited notable benefits of living by the code include reputational enhancement, strategic competitiveness and increased possibilities of wining cross-border cooperation among like-minded pharmaceutical players. In the efforts to reap from the code of ethics, communication was observed as an indispensable activity. Refresher trainings to remind the stakeholders about the promises in the code are also needed as time passes by, otherwise they forget. Needless to say, rewarding those who live an exemplary life in embracing and living by the code was cited as key in sustaining the ethical agenda. Lastly, managing multiple stakeholders influences is a curvilinear fashion and involves back and forth consultations.

The lessons learnt from KPI can be borrowed and used by both global pharmaceutical players and national/local players, especially those that face challenges living by the promise of their existing codes or those without business code of conduct and ethics. That is, both players can use the suggested process to help participants in their medicine supply chain to come up with working business codes of conduct, as well as guide the stakeholder consultative process which results in stakeholder buy-in.

For many years, issues surrounding bioethics have dominated priorities of World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO and many international and national development allies. However, there is an escalating violation of medical codes of conduct and ethics. Hence, this publication is a step toward the implementation of the principles and objectives of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights which is currently challenged with a difficult question posed by life sciences – How far can we go given the dented medical relationship between ethics, medical science and freedom?

Matthew Wynia and his co-authors and Charmers Clark, in their two chapters, take on thorny issues concerning the moral responsibilities of physicians – and, by implication, all health care professionals – regarding preparation for and response to epidemics (Clark, 2006; Wynia, Kurlander, & Green, 2006). Their chapters are especially timely, inasmuch as they address ethical challenges associated with bioterrorism, which, should it occur, could create an epidemic of catastrophic proportions, at least for the locality or localities in which the bioterrorism occurs. In this commentary, I provide a critical assessment of their chapters. I begin with a review of the foundational concept of the Wynia et al. chapter, social-trustee professionalism, and of the Clark chapter, a covenant of public trust. I then take up four issues: the moral demands of social-trustee professionalism and how the social-contract theory of medical ethics advocated by the framers of the 1847 American Medical Association Code of Ethics (American Medical Association, 1847) should be understood; social-role related obligations as ethically-justified limits on fiduciary responsibility in bioterrorism events and how such obligations should be addressed in a preventive ethics fashion by health care organizations; legitimate self-interests as ethically-justified limits on fiduciary responsibility and how such interests should be distinguished from mere self-interests and be addressed in a preventive ethics fashion by health care organizations; and the nature and limits of the standard of care in the large-scale emergencies that bioterrorism events could create.

The prime objective of this article is related to dignified human beings as patients in clinical interventions. The main attention of such a perception focuses on observance of humaneness in relationships among physicians, patients, family members, and community at large. This paper aims to address these issues.

The paper examines in depth, analytical deliberations concerning traditional and modern values of medical care and healthcare knowledge and practices.

Therefore, we need to attest that we live in a global village in which multicultural people must live side‐by‐side, if they desire to peacefully coexist. We must assume that human values are based upon general agreements about ethical issues. Such agreements rely on a framework of equitable treatments of all mankind. Medical ethics is about committed codes and oaths of professional medical authorities to protect natural rights, human rights, and civil rights of patients in clinical interventions. It strives to achieve professional objectives to facilitate patients to be recovered from pain and suffering and regain their health in order to live the good life.

This paper is devoted to define the notions relevant to the philosophies of quality of life, ethical, and moral problems concerning clinical medicine, and preventive care systems. It analyzes certain ethical and moral distinctions between medical care and healthcare services, and indicates that cautions should be observed in discussing these notions within the context of preventive care and clinical care systems.

This paper explores the following questions: What is the meaning of a psychosomatic normal life? How life should be respected? What are the meta‐medical practices? What should be the logical and philosophical foundations for medical care and healthcare ethics? How should clinicians and practitioners respect not only cost‐benefit analysis but also consider cost‐effectiveness analysis in providing and promoting medical care and healthcare services for patients?

The aim of this paper is to call for an increased focus on the ethics of direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising. This is important, not only to improve DTC prescription drug advertising, but also to inform DTC advertising of future medical advances.

This conceptual paper discusses two examples of medical advances – personal genetic testing services and surgically implanted medical devices – to explain how investigating the research of DTC prescription drug advertising can set the stage for more ethical advertising of future medical advances.

Specific issues related to health literacy, at-risk populations impacted by health disparities, and medicalization of issues common to aging relate to the DTC advertising of prescription drugs and other medical advances. Creative approaches to investigating these issues in the context of prescription drug advertising can enrich the debate about drug advertising, but also prepare researchers, policymakers, and consumers for future advertising of new medical developments.

The value of this paper is its call for increased focus on the ethics of DTC prescription drug advertising, to improve the current marketing environment but also lay the foundation for other healthcare marketing in the future.

Migration is increasing worldwide. health care practitioners must provide care to migrants in a culturally competent manner that is sensitive to cultural, political and economic contexts shaping health and illness. Many studies have provided strong evidence that health providers benefit from training in cross-cultural care. Cultural competence education of medical students during their early learning can begin to address attitudes and responsiveness toward refugees. At Memorial University in Canada, the authors designed “Morning in Refugee Health”, an innovative program in cultural competency training for first year medical students in the Clinical Skills and Ethics course. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

Here the authors introduce the curriculum and provide the rationale for the specific pedagogical techniques employed, emphasizing the consideration of culture in its relation to political and economic contexts. The authors describe the innovation of training standardized patients (SPs) who are themselves immigrants or refugees. The authors explain how and why the collaboration of community agencies and medical school administration is key to the successful implementation of such a curriculum.

Medical students benefit from early pre-clinical education in refugee health. Specific attention to community context, SP training, small group format, linkages between clinical skills and medical ethics, medical school administrative and community agency support are essential to development and delivery of this curriculum. As a result of the Morning in Refugee Health, students initiated a community medical outreach project for newly arriving refugees.

The approach is unique in three ways: integration of training in clinical skills and ethics; training of SPs who are themselves immigrants or refugees; and reflection on the political, economic and cultural contexts shaping health and health care.

The purpose of this study is to identify medical service quality factors that patients care about and establish a medical service quality evaluation index system by analyzing online reviews of medical and healthcare service platforms in combination with a questionnaire survey.

This study adopts a combination of review mining and questionnaire surveys. The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was used to mine hospital reviews on the medical and healthcare service platform to obtain the medical service quality factors that patients pay attention to, and then the questionnaire was administered to obtain the relative importance of these factors to patients' perception of service quality. Finally, the index system was established.

The medical service quality factors patients care about include medical skills and ethics, registration service, operation effect, consulting communication, drug therapy, diagnosis process and medical equipment.

The identification of medical service quality factors provides a reference for medical institutions to improve their medical service quality.

This study uses online review mining to obtain medical service quality factors from the perspective of patients, which is different from previous methods of obtaining factors from relevant literature or expert judgments; then, based on the mining results, a medical service quality evaluation index system is established by using questionnaire data.

The chapter deliberates on research ethics and the unanticipated side effects that technological developments have brought in the past decades. It looks at data protection and privacy through the prism of ethics and focuses on the need for safeguarding the fundamental rights of the research participants in the new digital era. Acknowledging the benefits of data analytics for boosting scientific process, the chapter reflects on the main principles and specific research derogations, introduced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Further on, it discusses some of the most pressing ethics concerns, related to the use, reuse, and misuse of data; the distinction between publicly available and open data; ethics challenges in online recruitment of research participants; and the potential bias and representativeness problems of Big Data research. The chapter underscores that all challenges should be properly addressed at the outset of research design. Highlighting the power asymmetries between Big Data studies and individuals’ rights to data protection, human dignity, and respect for private and family life, the chapter argues that anonymization may be reasonable, yet not the ultimate ethics solution. It asserts that while anonymization techniques may protect individual data protection rights, the former may not be sufficient to prevent discrimination and stigmatization of entire groups of populations. Finally, the chapter suggests some approaches for ensuring ethics compliance in the digital era.