Medical Ethics Advisor 2009-04-01

Do shrinking resources at hospitals mean less patient safety?

For the past decade, patient safety and quality care and all the assistant care policies and standards associated with quality initiatives have been directed at improving efficiencies of both cost and process within health care institutions.

Zoloth: Shrinking resources require redefinition

While some focus on the specific policies and standards of achieving a safe, quality health care system in the United States within the existing system, Laurie Zoloth, PhD, professor of bioethics at Northwestern University in Chicago, suggests a broader approach is necessary to achieve "healthy health care systems."

Obama moves to allow federal funding for ESCR

By executive order, President Obama on March 9 raised the spirits of many research scientists and those who hope for potential cures to disease by announcing his decision in favor of "removing barriers" to "responsible scientific research involving human stem cells."

"Why I Chose Bioethics as a Profession"

[Editor's note: This month's interview is with Laurie Zoloth, PhD, professor of bioethics at Northwestern University in Chicago.]

HHS publishes proposal to rescind 'rule of conscience'

At the urging of the Obama administration, a policy to rescind the so-called "rules of conscience" for health care providers means that battle lines have been drawn once again over the question of when life begins among other moral and scientific questions in reproductive health.

Ethics consults: Procedures at OHSU and Mass Gen

Susan Tolle, MD, director of the Center for Ethics at the Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland, takes very seriously the center's role in providing consultative services to smaller, critical access hospitals in that state.

News Briefs

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) reported that the nation's hospice community "claimed a significant victory" when President Obama signed The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Medical Ethics Advisor – April 1, 2009

April 1, 2009