Current Ethics in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, in Best Practice & Research: Clinical Anaesthesiology, vol. 20, no. 4, pages 493-668, December 2006

摘要

The ethical and related legal issues encountered in the current practices of anesthesiology and intensive care are considered at a basic level and primarily from the points of view of 14 authors from the United Kingdom and 1 from the United States. While the thrusts of the discussions and recommendations are in line with current concepts and practices in the US and elsewhere, the citations of professional codes, health organizational policies, legislation, and judicial decisions are drawn almost exclusively from the UK. It is noteworthy that UK legislation has many parallels with that of the US (e.g., UK Data Protection Act, 1998, USA Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act 1996). National Health Service goals are evident in considerations of social and distributive justice among the other principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, and beneficence that form the framework developed by Beauchamp and Childress for ethical decision making (Beauchamp TL, Childress JF: Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).