{"title":"Spiritual care in the dementia ward during a pandemic.","authors":"Talitha Cooreman-Guittin","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09666-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09666-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Covid-19 pandemic and the repeated lockdowns have caused substantial spiritual and existential suffering, not the least for persons with dementia who may have had more difficulties than others in grasping the reality of what was going on. Therefore, it is important to address spirituality within this sector of the population when considering global health and ethics and technology in a pandemic outbreak. This contribution starts firstly with a definition of spirituality and spiritual care. Secondly, based on the works of Elizabeth MacKinlay and Laura Dewitte, the article demonstrates how spirituality can be nurtured in the dementia ward through \"spiritual reminiscence.\" Finally, I briefly reflect on how spiritual care in the dementia ward was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"221-229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11166807/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140961308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catholic religious agency during the Covid-19 emergency: the issue of vaccines.","authors":"Renzo Pegoraro","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09673-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09673-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Catholic Church's reflection on and assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic has developed in several areas. Inspired by the tradition of its social teaching, specifically by the values of the dignity of the human person, justice, solidarity, and the common good, a strong sense of responsibility-on the part of all to prevent the spread of the pandemic and care for the affected sick-was called for. This resulted in a series of interventions and documents on the various medical and spiritual issues involved, particularly concerning the vaccines again Covid-19. In this short article, I draw out these insights from the official and universal reference point of the Catholic Church (i.e., Vatican sources in their various expressions and expertise). Interventions from other religions have also played a significant role during the Covid-19 pandemic as exemplified by the close relationship between certain religious actors and the World Health Organization. However, these alternative viewpoints, while important in and of themselves, do not find a suitable place within this work, which focuses on the Catholic Church's perspective.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"231-239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141176945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global health, planetary health, One Health: conceptual and ethical challenges and concerns.","authors":"Eduardo Missoni","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09670-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09670-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically shown the level of interconnectedness of the human population, the direct relation between human health and the ecosystem, as well as the enormous ethical challenges required for a global response. Relatedly, society has been directly confronted by issues of 'Global health,' both in terms of awareness of health conditions and health systems resiliency all around the world, as well as in terms of governance of the worldwide response and its implications at national and local levels. While Global health is often used as a cosmetic label for neocolonial approaches, it is really an interdisciplinary approach consisting of the interaction between globalization and the determinants of health. Thus, it involves the ecosystem and its transformation and implies a systemic 'One Health' decolonized approach in the definition of its strategies. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the inequities and the limits of the current hegemonic Global health system governance; calling for ethics to provide a renewed, comprehensive, inclusive, and decolonized conceptualization of Global health.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"241-250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11166850/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141094840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tacit social experimentation with digital technologies during the Covid-19 crisis.","authors":"Alain Loute","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09669-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09669-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the management of the Covid 19 crisis, digital technologies were used in a major way. This article defends the hypothesis that these technologies took the form of a \"tacit social experimentation\". This article justifies this concept in three levels. The first part uses this concept to qualify the form of biopolitics that was implemented to manage the crisis. Digital technologies were used to discipline the population and, literally speaking, as instruments of knowledge of the population. Uncertainty forced experts to make preliminary observations and act to produce knowledge. Second, this article shows that the use of digital technologies during the crisis was experimental in a second sense. By promoting telemedicine within a more flexible legal framework, the authorities authorised an experimental use of telemedicine without knowledge or control of its side effects. Finally, the article defends the use of the concept of \"tacit social experimentation\" for ethical and political purposes. For indeed, understanding the experiments carried out during the crisis begs the question of the involvement of the participants and their democratic steering.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"199-209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141094841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethical prioritization of critical care resources during COVID-19: perspectives from Italy and the United States.","authors":"Lucia Galvagni, Joseph A Raho","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09672-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09672-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines some of the ethical challenges of prioritizing intensive care resources during the Covid-19 pandemic by comparing the Italian and United States contexts. After presenting an overview to the clinical, ethical, and public debates in Italy, the article will discuss the development of triage allocation protocols in United States hospitals. Resource allocation criteria underwent increased scrutiny and critique in both countries, which resulted in modified professional and expert guidance regarding healthcare ethics during times of emergency and resource scarcity.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"167-181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141162663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Facing a pandemic outbreak: issues of global health, ethics, and technology.","authors":"Lucia Galvagni, Michele Nicoletti","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09668-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-024-09668-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"159-165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141094830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward a digitalized medicine: the Covid-19 pandemic as a disclosure of the importance of digital communication in the clinical world.","authors":"Monica Consolandi","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09667-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-024-09667-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":"9 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140962079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward a digitalized medicine: the Covid-19 pandemic as a disclosure of the importance of digital communication in the clinical world.","authors":"Monica Consolandi","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09667-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-024-09667-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper focuses on the importance of digital communication between medical teams and patients and their families when mediated by technological tools. Medicine is changing following the fourth industrial (the digital) revolution: from CAT scans, to X-rays, to UV radiation, to electronic records, to treatment tracking apps, to telemedicine, and the use of AI in doctors' decision-making processes. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted both the fruitful and problematic sides of this medical evolution. Digital tools such as tablets, smartphones, and video calling apps proved to be essential. Accordingly, I analyze three cases that reveal the helpfulness and the limitations of new communication technologies: on physicians and non-hospitalized patients, on families and patients, and on healthcare professionals and patients' families. Since the medical relationship is not only clinical but also relational and human, one must pay attention to the communicative dimensions of it to remain at least partly human-e.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140961313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spiritual care in the dementia ward during a pandemic.","authors":"Talitha Cooreman-Guittin","doi":"10.1007/s11017-024-09666-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-024-09666-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":"18 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140968766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kairos in diagnostics.","authors":"Bjørn Hofmann, Urban Wiesing","doi":"10.1007/s11017-023-09657-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11017-023-09657-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Kairos has been a key concept in medicine for millennia and is frequently understood as \"the right time\" in relation to treatment. In this study we scrutinize kairos in the context of diagnostics. This has become highly topical as technological developments have caused diagnostics to be performed ever earlier in the disease development. Detecting risk factors, precursors, and predictors of disease (in biomarkers, pre-disease, and pre-pre-disease) has resulted in too early diagnoses, i.e., overdiagnoses. Nonetheless, despite vast advances in science and technology, diagnoses also come too late. Accordingly, timing diagnostics right is crucial. In this article we start with giving a brief overview of the etymology and general use of the concepts of kairos and diagnosis. Then we delimit kairos in diagnostics by analysing \"too early\" and \"too late\" diagnosis and by scrutinizing various phases of diagnostics. This leads us to define kairos of diagnostics as the time when there is potential for sufficient information for making a diagnosis that is most helpful for the person. It allows us to conclude that kairos is as important in diagnostics as in therapeutics.</p>","PeriodicalId":94251,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical medicine and bioethics","volume":" ","pages":"99-108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10959829/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139699209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}