Exploring the ethical dimensions in forensic entomology: From codes of conduct to professional accountability.

This article investigates a critical part of professional careers: adhering to a code of ethics that defines proper behavior within the context of one's specialized practice. It aims to improve the setting of forensic entomology work by highlighting the ethical issues that frequently emerge. The primary goal is to uncover common ethical issues involved in this field's everyday activities and provide informed advice on appropriate resolution options. This investigation dives into the complex interaction of religious beliefs, cultural aspects, and issues of ethics, evaluating their relevance in forensic entomology. It examines a wide range of ethical issues, from the ethics involved in collecting samples at crime scenes and morguesto the ethics created into scientific investigations, report writing, and court testimony. These guiding principles are critical in setting scientific standards and building public trust in forensic entomology's ability to provide exceptional services. Notably, regardless of whether the forensic entomology service provider is accredited by any validating organization, these ethical requirements remain critical, emphasizing their global application.

Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals.

The Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals (2022) was recently created to further delineate the ethical boundaries and conduct expectations for professional emergency management practice. Significantly, the code of ethics provides an essential foundation toward recognition as a profession with hallmarks of monopoly, autonomy, and authority. The code and standards of conduct establish a clear definition of the role emergency management has in overseeing a complex, diverse risk portfolio that protects lives, livelihoods, and quality of life. The document captures the intent, challenges, dimensions, and significance of emergency management practice in a rapidly changing world and brings ethics to the forefront of decisions. This article speaks to the discursive dialogue toward, methodological development of, and future tools for integrating into practice the Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals.

Pandemic ethics and beyond: Creating space for virtues in the social professions.

BACKGROUND: During the pandemic, social and health care professionals operated in 'crisis conditions'. Some existing rules/protocols were not operational, many services were closed/curtailed, and new 'blanket' rules often seemed inappropriate or unfair. These experiences provide fertile ground for exploring the role of virtues in professional life and considering lessons for professional ethics in the future. RESEARCH DESIGN AND AIM: This article draws on an international qualitative survey conducted online in May 2020, which aimed to explore the ethical challenges experienced by social workers during Covid-19. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: 607 social workers responded from 54 countries, giving written online responses. This article first summarises previously published findings from the survey regarding the range of ethical challenges experienced, then develops a new analysis of social workers' accounts of ethically challenging situations from a virtue ethics perspective. This analysis took a narrative ethics approach, treating respondents' accounts as stories featuring the tellers as moral agents, with implicit or explicit implications for their professional ethical identity and character. The article is illustrated with accounts from the 41 UK respondents, drawing particularly on two case examples. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Ethical approval was gained from Durham University and anonymity was ensured for participants. FINDINGS/RESULTS: This article explores the nature of the ethical space created during the pandemic showing how practitioners were able to draw more on 'inner resources' and professional discretion than usual, displaying virtues such as professional wisdom, care, respectfulness and courage as they took account of the specific contexts of their work, rather than simply adhering to blanket rules. CONCLUSION: Exploring practice through a virtue ethical lens provides valuable lessons for 'building back better' in social and health care professions.

The revised International Code of Medical Ethics: an exercise in international professional ethical self-regulation.

The World Medical Association (WMA), the global representation of the medical profession, first adopted the International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME) in 1949 to outline the professional duties of physicians to patients, other physicians and health professionals, themselves and society as a whole. The ICoME recently underwent a major 4-year revision process, culminating in its unanimous adoption by the WMA General Assembly in October 2022 in Berlin. This article describes and discusses the ICoME, its revision process, the controversial and uncontroversial issues, and the broad consensus achieved among WMA constituent members, representing over 10 million physicians worldwide. The authors analyse the ICoME, including its response to contemporary changes and challenges like ethical plurality and globalisation, in light of ethical theories and approaches, reaching the conclusion that the document is a good example of international ethical professional self-regulation.

Honoring DEI Requires a New Ethic and a New Science.

Systemic change requires complex conceptual and practical efforts from organizations and individuals alike. In forensic psychiatry, improving the experiences of marginalized groups respects the personhood and dignity of those who have been neglected over time and promises improvements in outcomes that have been affected by the unevenness of history. Specific plans for education, monitoring, and improvement consequently call for related frameworks in professional ethics and research to lead and accompany them. The professional ethics of forensic practice, for example, can now consider years of writing that advance traditional precepts toward dignity, social purpose, truth, and human rights. Research design can improve the representativeness of samples, the methods that assess inequity, and the survey construction that populates both quality improvement and academic research. Responding to the growing understanding of forensic inequity will require both a new ethic and a new science.

A Systematic Review of the 2016 National Academy of Engineering Exemplary Ethics Programs: Revisions to a Coding Framework.

Engineering ethics is a required aspect of accredited ABET programs, but there is widespread variation in how ethics is taught, to what ends, and how those ends are assessed. This variation makes it challenging to identify practices for teaching ethics to engineers aligned with extant practices in the field. In this study, we revise a recent coding framework by reviewing exemplary engineering ethics programs recognized by the National Academy of Engineering in 2016, or what we refer to as "exemplars." We pursue two primary objectives: (1) To apply and revise a prior coding framework to codify ethics learning objectives, instructional strategies, and assessment strategies in engineering education; and (2) To use the revised coding framework to identify trends in learning objectives, instructional strategies, and assessment strategies of NAE exemplars. We employ systemic review procedures to update the coding framework using 24 of 25 exemplars as a data source. The updated framework includes four primary categories associated with learning objectives, instructional strategies, assessment data collection strategies, and assessment design characteristics. Results indicate that ethical sensitivity or awareness was present in every exemplar as a learning objective, often alongside ethical reasoning-based learning objectives and the formation of professional skills. Exemplars employed numerous instructional strategies in tandem, as we coded eight out of 18 instructional strategies among at least half of the exemplars. Assignments/homework and summative reflections were the most oft-used sources of assessment data. Due to our challenges in coding assessment approaches, we offer practical suggestions for assessing engineering ethics instruction which are based on many of our coding discussions. We hope that this coding framework, the results classifying exemplary features of the NAE programs, and our practical suggestions can guide future instructors as they design, classify, assess, and report their approaches to engineering ethics education.

Professional ethics for infectious disease control: moral conflict management in modern public health practice.

OBJECTIVES: Despite scientific evidence that confirms their effectiveness, use of vaccines and microbiological mass testing during the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with social and moral controversies. In this commentary, it is suggested how such conflicts originating from moral/normative imperatives can be managed in infectious disease control. STUDY DESIGN: This was a commentary analysis. METHODS: A case example of scientific and public debate regarding infectious disease control and policy-making during the early pandemic response is first presented. The case is used to characterize how conflicts arising from moral constraints occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. These features are thereafter used as a basis for outlining a strategy for moral conflict prevention and management. RESULTS: A challenge for infectious disease control throughout the pandemic was how to manage persuasive initiatives originating from social forces competing with science for influence. Purposively maneuvered information distributed through social media and internet websites could predispose population factions to contest legitimate (evidence and legally based) pandemic response measures. During the pandemic, fact-based criticism of professionals responsible for infectious disease control was mixed with a critique of their moral standards and intentions so as to diminish effectiveness and credibility. Such blending could be curtailed if infectious disease control professionals are made accountable for public health decisions made in the light of prevalent scientific evidence and legislation. CONCLUSIONS: If the infectious disease control community would embrace the international code of medical professional ethics, this would help to deal with moral conflicts, especially ones arising from external threats, in modern public health.

A Paragem Cardiorrespiratória no Extra-Hospitalar e os Fatores que influenciam o Dilema Ético dos Profissionais / Out-of-Hospital Cardiorespiratory Arrest and the Factors that Influence Professionals' Ethical Dilemma

O Relatório Final de Estágio é composto por uma descrição e análise das atividades e competências comuns e específicas do Enfermeiro Especialista de Enfermagem Médico-Cirúrgica desenvolvidas no contexto do Estágio e por uma investigação secundária do tipo scoping review relativa à temática dos fatores que influenciam o dilema ético dos profissionais no extra-hospitalar na paragem cardiorrespiratória. Em Portugal, os enfermeiros a exercer funções nas Ambulâncias de Suporte Imediato de Vida, perante situações de paragem cardiorrespiratória são obrigados legalmente a iniciar e manter manobras de reanimação cardiopulmonar. É imperativo o desenvolvimento de competências clínicas diferenciadas que permitam uma tomada de decisão especializada. Pelo que, o objetivo desta investigação é mapear os fatores que influenciam o dilema ético, dos profissionais de saúde, perante a paragem cardiorrespiratória em contexto extra-hospitalar. Fez-se uma aproximação metodológica a uma Scoping Review, segundo a proposta do Joanna Briggs Institute através de pesquisa em bases de dados de relevo para a temática, repositório científico e literatura cinzenta para identificar estudos relevantes que respondessem a critérios de inclusão previamente definidos. Para tal, foi definida, segundo a mnemónica Population, Concept, Context, a questão de pesquisa, ?que fatores influenciam o dilema ético dos profissionais de saúde perante uma paragem cardiorrespiratória, em contexto extra-hospitalar?? Desta forma, perspetiva-se que o Relatório contribua para a análise crítica das competências desenvolvidas durante o Estágio, bem como para a identificação de fatores que influenciam o dilema ético dos profissionais de saúde perante a paragem cardiorrespiratória em contexto extra-hospitalar, dada a necessidade de rever e atualizar os protocolos instituídos em contexto extra-hospitalar, a nível nacional.

Exploring the ethics of political PR professionals using moral foundations theory.

This paper offers a multidimensional theoretical scheme to analyze professional ethics in the field of political public relations. We suggest investigating the decisions of these professionals using moral foundations theory because human ethical reasoning is contextual, and the examination of ethics in a one-dimensional manner as previous researchers have done overlooks the complexity of the moral choices that such professionals make. The prospects of the proposed theoretical approach are demonstrated on 16 interviews with post-soviet Russian political PR industry leaders that were conducted from March 2018 to April 2020. Our empirical findings show that Russian political PR specialists employ all moral foundations, however, in their narratives the "care/harm" and "authority/respect" foundations were not mentioned very often. Overall, this paper makes a critical contribution to research on professional ethics in political public relations, and it provides important insight into the specifics of moral reasoning in the Russian political PR industry that is insufficiently described in the current literature.

Testing the impact of occupational intervention on professional ethics and values of Staff in University Medical Centers.

BACKGROUND: The level of commitment to jobs is the driver of how much a worker could offer to those that need the services. People become poised to deliver services when they hold the job in high esteem. Evidence abounds that some workers in public services barely value their professional responsibilities and conduct. This motivated the present researchers to test the impacts of rational emotive behavioral occupational intervention (REBOI) on the professional ethics and values of Staff in University Medical Centers. METHODS: to achieve the above aim, a randomized control design was used. A total of 114 staff were recruited, assessed 3 times using 3 instruments, and coached by therapists. The coaching last for 12 sessions. The data collected were subjected to a multivariate statistical analysis to test how effective the intervention was in changing negative perceptions about values and ethics in workplaces. RESULTS: It was found that REBOI changes negative perceptions about professional ethics and values among staff of medical centers. The effectiveness of the REBOI is not statistically influenced by gender and group interaction. Gender does not moderate the impact of the intervention. CONCLUSION: This study finally suggests that REBOI effectively changes negative perceptions about values and ethics among health workers. Thus, recommends for the advancement of Ellis' principles in other workplaces and across populations.

Complaints against Physicians in Minas Gerais, Brazil / Quejas contra médicos en Minas Gerais, Brasil / Reclamações contra médicos em Minas Gerais, Brasil

The Regional Councils of Medicine are responsible for the first instance evaluation of ethical-professional complaints against physicians in each federation state. The relevance of the study is based on the importance of evaluating the professional profile of the reported physician, the characteristics of the complaints, and the judging body performance. This study assessed 966 complaints against physicians made to the Regional Council of Medicine of Minas Gerais (CRM/MG) from 2012 to 2017. There was no difference in the average age of the professionals or the period of professional practice. Gynecology, Internal Medicine, General Surgery, and Plastic Surgery comprised most of the complaints regarding medical specialties. The non-specialty reports reached 323 (34%) cases and predominated over the years studied. The number of acquittals was relatively high, in a total of 535 cases, in which the Regional Council of Medicine of Minas Gerais (CRM/MG) considered the complaints unfounded. The hypothesis of a certain corporativism of the CRM did not seem viable since thirty cases received harsher punishments, and among them, eight were removed from professional practice. Some professionals were reported more than once. It is worth noting that the number of recidivists and cases progressively decreased from 2012 to 2017.

Los Consejos Regionales de Medicina son responsables de la evaluación en primera instancia de las denuncias ético-profesionales contra médicos en cada estado de la federación. La relevancia del estudio se basa en la importancia de evaluar el perfil profesional del médico denunciado, las características de las denuncias y la actuación del órgano juzgador. Este estudio evaluó 966 denuncias contra médicos presentadas al Consejo Regional de Medicina de Minas Gerais (CRM/MG) de 2012 a 2017. No hubo diferencias en la edad media de los profesionales ni en el período de ejercicio profesional. Ginecología, Medicina Interna, Cirugía General y Cirugía Plástica englobaron la mayoría de las denuncias relativas a especialidades médicas. Las denuncias de no especialidad alcanzaron 323 (34%) casos y predominaron a lo largo de los años estudiados. El número de absoluciones fue relativamente elevado, en un total de 535 casos, en los que el Consejo Regional de Medicina de Minas Gerais (CRM/MG) consideró infundadas las denuncias. La hipótesis de un cierto corporativismo del CRM no pareció viable, ya que treinta casos recibieron castigos más severos y, entre ellos, ocho fueron apartados del ejercicio profesional. Algunos profesionales fueron denunciados más de una vez. Cabe destacar que el número de reincidentes y de casos disminuyó progresivamente de 2012 a 2017.

Os Conselhos Regionais de Medicina são responsáveis pelas avaliações, em primeira instância, de denúncias ético-profissionais contra médicos, em cada estado da federação. A relevância do presente estudo se fundamenta na importância de se avaliar o perfil profissional do denunciado, as características das denúncias e o desempenho do órgão julgador. O presente estudo avaliou 966 denúncias contra médicos, feitas ao Conselho Regional de Medicina de Minas Gerais (CRM/MG), de 2012 a 2017. Não houve diferença com relação à média de idade do profissional, nem com relação ao tempo de exercício profissional. No que diz respeito às especialidades médicas (tabela 5), as áreas de Ginecologia, Clínica Médica, Cirurgia Geral e Cirurgia Plástica compreenderam grande parte das denúncias. Os denunciados sem especialidade alcançaram o no número de 323 (34%) e predominaram. O número de absolvições foi relativamente alto, num total de 535 denunciados, nos quais o Conselho Regional de Medicina de Minas Gerais (CRM/MG) considerou as acusações infundadas. A hipótese de certo corporativismo do CRM, não pareceu viável, visto que trinta casos receberam punição mais severa, dentre os quais, oito cassações do exercício profissional. Alguns profissionais foram denunciados mais de uma vez. Vale observar que o número de profissionais reincidentes, bem como o número de processos decaiu progressivamente, de 2012 a 2017.

Identifying and mitigating moral injury risks in military behavioral health providers.

The term "moral injury" was initially used to describe the multifaceted pain that service members feel after perpetrating, witnessing, or failing to prevent acts that conflict with their moral codes. More recently the term has been used to describe healthcare providers' pain stemming from their experiences serving on the frontlines of the healthcare system when: a medical error causes serious harm to patients, systems continuously impede their abilities to provide proper care, or providers assess that they have acted in ways that conflict with their professional ethics or oaths to "do no harm." This article explores moral injury risk at the intersection of military service and healthcare by examining challenges that military behavioral healthcare providers face. Leveraging moral injury definitions previously applied to service members (personal or witnessed transgressions) and in two healthcare contexts ("second victim" to adverse client outcomes and system-driven moral distress), as well as literature on ethical challenges in military behavioral health, this paper uncovers situations that may amplify military behavioral health providers' risks for moral injury. It concludes by offering policy and practice recommendations germane to military medicine aimed at alleviating pressures military behavioral healthcare providers face and mitigating moral injuries' potential ripple effects on provider wellness, retention and care quality.

[Development and reform of the curriculum of engineering ethics education in biology and medicine under the background of "new engineering"].

The "new engineering" concept requires that in addition to laying a solid professional foundation, engineering colleges and universities in China should also pay attention to improving the humanistic quality and developing a professional ethics education in training the engineering and technical talents. One important way is to carry out the engineering ethics education. By referring to the mature case-teaching ideas around the world and combining the practical experience accumulated in recent years, this paper focuses on the curriculum development and teaching reform of engineering ethics for students studying biological and medical engineering, from the perspectives of case selection and teaching method innovation. It also introduces some typical case studies, and summarizes the teaching effect analyzed from questionnaire.

Go Big or Go Home? A New Case for Integrating Micro-ethics and Macro-ethics in Engineering Ethics Education.

In this paper, I make a novel case for an expansive approach to engineering ethics education, one that regards micro-ethics and macro-ethics as essentially complementary. Although others have voiced support for including macro-ethical reflection within engineering ethics education, I advance a stronger claim, arguing that isolating engineering ethics from macro-level issues risks rendering even micro-ethical inquiry morally meaningless. I divide my proposal into four parts. First, I clarify the distinction between micro-ethics and macro-ethics as I am construing it, defending my characterization against a potential worry. Second, I consider but reject some arguments for a restrictive approach, one that excludes macro-ethical reflection from engineering ethics education. Third, I offer my central argument for an expansive approach. Finally, I suggest that macro-ethics education can learn something valuable from micro-ethics pedagogy. On my proposal, students consider both micro- and macro-ethical problems from the deliberative perspective, situating micro-ethical problems within a broader social framework but also situating macro-ethical problems within an engaged, practical framework. By emphasizing the value of the deliberative perspective, my proposal contributes to a growing call to broaden the scope of engineering ethics education while maintaining its practical relevance.

Potato Ethics: What Rural Communities Can Teach Us about Healthcare.

In this paper I offer the term "potato ethics" to describe a particular professional rural health sensibility. I contrast this attitude with the sensibility behind urban professional ethics, which often focus on the narrow doctor-patient treatment relationship. The phrase appropriates a Swedish metaphor, the image of the potato as a humble side dish: plain, useful, versatile, and compatible with any main course. Potato ethics involves making oneself useful, being pragmatic, choosing to be like an invisible elf who prevents discontinuity rather than a more visible observer of formal rules and assigned tasks. It also includes actively taking part in everyday disaster-prevention and fully recognizing the rural context as a vulnerable space. This intersectional argument, which emphasizes the ongoing, holistic responsibility of those involved in rural communities, draws on work from the domains of care ethics, relational ethics, pragmatic psychology, feminist ethics of embodiment, social location theory, and reflections on geographical narcissism.