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J F Drane

Publications and source records attributed to J F Drane.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Medical ethics and maternal-fetal conflicts.

As ethical issues are raised by more and more aspects of medical practice, medical ethics becomes an ever more complex and confusing enterprise, presenting yet another physician dilemma. This article offers guidelines for individual physicians and hospital ethics committees in dealing with medical ethics and maternal-fetal conflicts.

Child Advocacy↗
PubMed1990

National survey of ethical issues presented to drug information centers.

Whether and how drug information centers respond to calls from the public that involve ethical issues was studied. A survey describing six ethical dilemmas typical of those presented by calls from the public was mailed to pharmacists in 154 drug information centers to see how the questions would be handled. Centers that had written policies governing responses to questions with ethical implications were asked to submit those policies. One hundred twenty-six centers (82%) responded to the survey; of these, 81 (64.3%) answered questions from the public. There were no significant differences in characteristics between centers that did and did not respond to public calls. The case analyses, completed only by pharmacists in centers that responded to public calls, covered such issues as invasion of privacy, social responsibility, personal liability, and interference with the patient-physician relationship. Respondents exercised a wide degree of discretion in determining if they would answer a question; for example, while only 4% would not answer a question concerning the efficacy of a weight-loss diet patch, 77% reported they would not respond to a caller asking for information on drugs that could interfere with the results of a polygraph test. Although respondents often cited institutional policy as the reason for failing to respond to a question, none submitted a copy of such a policy. The pharmacists' responses indicated a high degree of moral and social sensitivity; nonetheless, written policies should be developed to assist drug information center staff members in handling questions that have ethical implications.

Adrenergic beta-Antagonists↗
PubMed1990

Methodologies for clinical ethics.

Truly professional medical ethics requires a methodology that generates both moral discernment and consistently right judgments. In this article the author briefly reviews difficulties involved in ethical decision-making, the historical development of casuistry, and four ethical methodologies employed in clinical medicine today. These latter, which are outlined and compared, are as follows: the methodology developed by David Thomasma in the 1960s and 1970s; one created by Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade; another developed by the author; and the Bochum Protocol authored by Hans-Martin Sass et al. of the Bochum Center for Medical Ethics in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Casuistry↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Methods of clinical ethics].

Medical ethics decisions always entail a certain amount of difficulty. Clinical alternatives make the adoption of well-founded decisions quite difficult. Each case is different and does not lend itself to a predetermined decision. If a satisfactory method is used to make moral evaluations, serious mistakes can almost always be avoided and defensible decisions made. Medical ethics is many things, but in essence it is necessarily a strategy or method. True professional medical ethics requires a method that leads to moral discernment as well as uniformly appropriate decisions. One of the most important functions of a method is to keep standards of evaluation linked to facts. Good methods prevent medical ethics from falling into the trap of false generalization and keep it rooted in real-life situations.

Decision Making↗