The history of critical care is a narrative of increasing understanding of what care benefits our patients, delivered in a context that was stable, well understood, and substantially under local control. Now, our understanding of what care patients require is threatened by a variety of disruption in how that care is delivered. New restrictions on duty hours, the expansion of the critical care w...

The presence and/or absence of effective leaders in health care can have a stark consequence on the quality and outcomes of care. The delivery of safe, quality, compassionate health care is dependent on having effective clinical leaders at the frontline. In light of the Kirkup and Francis reports, this article explores some ways of translating clinical leadership into health care quality improv...

Ethical issues in Technological disaster: A systematic review of literature Introduction: Industrialization could bring risk of Technological Disaster (TD) such as happened in Chernobyl, Bhopal and Fukushima crisis. little has been discussed about its related ethical issues. In this study, we aimed to investigate ethical issues have been stated for technological disasters. Material and Methods:...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Publicly funded health care systems are increasingly confronted with fiscal and demographic challenges and face pressure to constrain resource use without impacting clinical outcomes. FINDINGS Clinicians routinely make decisions in the care of their patients that use finite health care resources. Aligning the goal of caring for their patients with ensuring that effective int...

As a regulated health professional what are your obligations in situations such as SARS, a Katrina-like event or an influenza pandemic? Do you know? If you do not know, where would you seek guidance? Have you had a conversation about these issues with colleagues? With your family? With management? With your professional association? The issue of duty to care is one of profound ethical significa...

BACKGROUND AIDS, SARS, and the recent epidemics of the avian-flu have all served to remind us the debate over the limits of the moral duty to care. It is important to first consider the question of whether or not the "duty to treat" might be subject to contextual constraints. The purpose of this study was to investigate the opinions and beliefs held by both physicians and dentists regarding the...

I t is widely accepted that ‘‘continuity of care’’ is vital to its quality and safety. The traditional approach to achieving this in the inpatient setting has been to minimize transfers among providers to reduce interruptions in the care process. In recent years the effort to limit duty hours for resident physicians (junior doctors) in the US, UK, and EU has highlighted the fact that continuity...