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Telesurgery Poses Unique Ethical Considerations

The cutting-edge field of telesurgery holds promise for improved patient outcomes, but there also are significant ethical considerations.

Many Ethics Consults Involve Questions on Life-Sustaining Treatment

How are you going to justify the decision? This is the question Thomas D. Harter, PhD, asks intensive care unit (ICU) clinicians who are struggling with whether to continue or withdraw life-sustaining treatment.

Clinicians Report Challenges with Goals of Care Discussions

As a clinician caring for patients with chronic critical illness, Sarah Andersen, MD, MS, observed that achieving meaningful goals of care decisions seemed to be more challenging than for other patients. “One of the challenges is that patients with chronic critical illness are often too sick to express their values and participate in decisions,” she says.

Unique Ethical Concerns if Research Involves the Recently Deceased

Research on recently deceased humans is important to conduct, but there are many challenging ethical considerations.

Demand for Pediatric Ethics Consults Is Increasing

As a long-term member of the ethics committee at Akron Children’s Hospital, Julie M. Aultman, PhD, noticed a shift in the types of consultations in which ethicists were engaged. Consults involved a wide range of issues, from end-of-life care to organizational ethics. Overall, cases were becoming more complex.

Nursing Union Condemns CDC Respiratory Changes

National Nurses United condemned new COVID-19 recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shortens the isolation period for the public to as little as 24 hours if symptoms abate and the person is non-febrile.

PEP Clock Ticking After Sharps Injury

Infection preventionists involved in post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for potential human immunodeficiency virus needlesticks should know the clock is ticking after injury follow-up begins. Such needlesticks certainly are a rare event, but the risk of seroconversion is not zero. A call to the National Clinician Consultation Center PEP line could be in order.

New Leaders in Infection Control

The new leaders in two key roles for healthcare epidemiology and public health are Tania Bubb, PhD, RN, CIC, FAPIC, 2024 president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology; and Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Environmentalists Seek Common Ground with IPs

Too often cast in conflict, environmental sustainability and infection prevention actually have many opportunities for cooperation to improve both missions, says Emily Mediate, MSc, MPP, director of climate and health in the United States for Health Care Without Harm, a global organization.

IPs Urged to Join Healthcare Sustainability Movement

In the aftermath of a pandemic that drove an astounding increase in single-use medical supplies, the inevitable reckoning and potential partnership between infection prevention and the healthcare environmental sustainability movement has accelerated. The search for common ground is at a critical inflection point.