Equality vs. equity in a publicly funded healthcare system
By Andria Bianchi
Living in a publicly funded healthcare system may lead some providers and/or organizations to strive to achieve a system of complete equality...
Considering ethics in human resources
By Andria Bianchi
In most mid-to-large sized healthcare organizations and all Canadian academically-affiliated hospitals, anyone (i.e., patients, families, volunteers, clinicians, and staff) can contact an...
What to wear? The ethical benefits and challenges of wearable devices
By Andria Bianchi
The prevalence of using wearable devices to monitor aspects related to one’s health has increased in recent years. Some devices have functions...
Brain death: An area fraught with more questions than answers
By Andria Bianchi
The topic of neurologically determined death (“brain death”) is fraught with ethical and philosophical questions. A 2014 policy by the Canadian Medical...
Ethics and the stigma of mental illness and addiction
By Daniel Buchman
Stigma is socially discrediting. It is a complex social and psychological process that is enacted through intersecting individual (e.g., self-stigma), interpersonal (e.g.,...
Considering the ethics of personalized medicine
By Andria Bianchi
Personalized medicine is commonly defined as a type of medical care that is managed in accordance with one’s personal genome. The idea...
Sexuality in end-of-life care: Who should start the discussion?
By Andria Bianchi
In December 2017, Canada’s federal government called on the Minister of Health to create a framework for palliative care. This call to...
Staff engagement: What’s ethics got to do with it?
Engagement of staff members and physicians is a significant priority in many hospitals, and for good reason. At a high level, organizations with more...
Flu vaccines and Ebola relief – do we have duties to get and to...
Over 40 years ago, philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer published an article called "Famine affluence and morality". The piece argued that we ought to...
Navigating confidentiality with suicidal youth
Confidentiality has long been a cornerstone of professional ethics; in medicine it can be traced all the way back to the Hippocratic Oath. It...
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