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Biomedical subjects

Nuala Kenny

Publications and source records attributed to Nuala Kenny.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Some ethical reflections on accountability.

Wait times have come to dominate the health reform agenda and have captured the public imagination. Waiting for any service--from fast food to e-mail--is difficult for contemporary Canadians; this is especially true for healthcare. Addressing wait times is part of a much larger initiative essential for the health system and dependent on a culture shift from the "blame game" to a sustained, meaningful accountability. Achieving this goal in such a value-laden endeavour as healthcare will be no small task. Accountability for the fair provision of access to and quality of services in healthcare is complex and demanding, in large part because of the nature of health need and the social meaning of healthcare. Failure of progress on this issue is related to a lack of clarity about the locus, meaning and scope of accountability. Without such clarity the term runs the risk of becoming useless or dangerous. Ethically, the key lies in understanding the profoundly value-laden nature of both healthcare and public policy.

Canada↗
PubMed2005

Wanted: a new ethics field for health policy analysis.

Ethics guidance and ethical frameworks are becoming more explicit and prevalent in health policy proposals. However, little attention has been given to evaluating their roles and impacts in the policy arena. Before this can be investigated, fundamental questions must be asked about the nature of ethics in relation to policy, and about the nexus of the fields of applied ethical analysis and health policy analysis. This paper examines the interdisciplinary stretch between bioethics and health policy analysis. In particular, it highlights areas of scholarship where a health policy ethics specialization--as distinctive from bioethics--might develop to address health policy concerns. If policy and ethics both ask the same question, that question is: "What is the good, and how do we achieve (create, protect, cultivate) it?" To answer this question, the new field of "health policy ethics" requires development. First, we should develop a full set of ethical principles and complementary ethical theories germane to public policy per se. Second, we must understand better how explicit attention to ethical concerns affects policy dynamics. Third, we require new policy and ethical analytic approaches that contribute to constructive (not obstructive) policy making. Finally, we need indicators of robust, high quality ethical analysis for the purpose public policy making.

Benchmarking↗
PubMed2004

Value(s) for money? Assessing Romanow and Kirby.

Many people have grave concerns that Canadian taxpayers have not received value for the time, energy and money spent on analysis of our healthcare system over the last 20 years. The number of reports and recommendations is enormous. Millions of dollars have been spent. While we have been busy studying healthcare costs, they have risen. How can Canadians judge if we have received our money's worth : Some criteria are: there would be greater clarity regarding the goals of healthcare system reform; citizens would understand the issues better; federal-political "wrangling" would be closer to resolution; agreement on long-overdue efficiencies would result in obvious improvement; major disagreements about the way forward would also be clearly understood; and finally, accountability to Canadians for acting on healthcare recommendations would be a reality.

Canada↗