Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
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Since non-directed (altruistic) kidney donors do not stand to benefit from the lengthening and strengthening of a relationship that they intrinsically value, their donations are considered to constitute the most altruistic variety of living kidney donation. ⋯ Accordingly, the expected value of becoming a living kidney donor is likely to be positive, meaning the act of doing so may be considered akin to the taking out of an insurance policy. In the context of non-directed (altruistic) kidney donation, this may diminish the extent to which such a donation is considered altruistic.
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There are high hopes that clinical decisions can be improved by adopting algorithms trained to estimate the likelihood that a patient suffers a condition C. Introducing work on the epistemic value of purely statistical evidence in legal epistemology I show that a certain type of AI devices for making medical decisions about persons rely on purely statistical evidence and that it raises an important question about the appropriateness of relying on such devices for allocating health resources. If the argument I present is sound, then it suggests a radical rethinking of the use of prevalent types of AI devices as well as the use of statistical evidence in medical practice more generally.
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Narrative Medicine (NM) and Indigenous Story Medicine both use narrative to understand and effect health, but their respective conceptualizations of narrative differ. ⋯ I call for more scholars to take up different narratives to further investigate the ethical space between NM and Indigenous Story Medicine.
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When one is seriously ill, the diagnosis given can generate questions about what it means and how to make sense of it. This is particularly the case for psychiatric diagnoses which can convey a biomedical narrative of the sufferer's condition. Making sense of one's diagnosis in such cases can involve changing one's self-narrative in such a way as to incorporate the belief that one has developed a disease with an unknown cause. ⋯ I argue that those receiving a psychiatric diagnosis may consequently be vulnerable to epistemic injustice. In particular, this includes hermeneutical injustice, where individuals lack the ability to understand or articulate their experiences in ways that make sense to them, due to their hermeneutical resources being marginalised by the dominant narrative in a medicalized environment. I consider two possible objections to my claim and offer answers to these.
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The GRADE system of clinical recommendations has deontic implications and can discriminate between mandatory, prohibited, and merely permitted medical decisions. ⋯ If there is no prima facie evidence that a proposed treatment is harmful, doctors are not negligent in considering it in shared doctor-patient decision-making. But these clinical decisions under uncertainty do not transfer obligations to health authorities, who are not part of the decision-making process in clinical settings. The clinical decision-making process concerns particulars and is guided by contextual and specific reasons that do not fall within the scope of a general policy. Thus, in the context of a serious epidemic in which patients need and demand treatments, if the body of evidence is still changing and fragile, an attitude of tolerance and connivance may ensure a smoother transition to a more stable phase of progress, both in scientific and clinical medicine.