Improving quality of life is one of the main advantages of integrating new innovations into medicine. New technologies are revolutionizing medicine and opening new opportunities for patients, doctors, clinics, and companies. The patient's well-being is monitored autonomously by smartphones, digital medical records simplify everyday clinical work, virtual reality is used for treatment, and robots help in the operating room. The new technological possibilities in healthcare not only change patients' lives, but also the work of doctors, clinics, and companies. In the fields of healthcare and medicine, new technologies can be used for patient communication, health monitoring, or for the treatment of patients, and modern research is devoted to advancing and understanding these technologies. Ethical Implications of Reshaping Healthcare With Emerging Technologies includes the most up-to-date research in the fields of healthcare and medicine worldwide, provides answers to the forms of treatment that are already possible in medicine, and illuminates the future possibilities that are already being researched. In addition, today's knowledge is translated and shown in how new technologies such as autonomous VR-system can be used for pain reduction as part of a treatment. Finally, this book examines the ethical guidelines in healthcare and medicine that are associated with the rapid development of these technologies. This book will be useful for the healthcare industry, hospital administration, the health insurance industry, doctors, healthcare workers, business professionals, IT specialists, medical software designers, scientists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the latest information on the use of emerging technologies in healthcare settings.

The definitive guide to the law that all nurses need to know. Written specifically for student nurses as well as those already in practice, Dimond's Legal Aspects of Nursing is your essential practical guide to the legal principles you need to be aware of in your everyday nursing practice. Building on previous editions of the book by Bridgit Dimond, this 8th edition has been significantly reworked by a new author team with extensive experience in teaching nursing law. It has also been fully updated and revised in line with recent legal developments and the new Nursing standards to ensure it continues to meet the requirements of nursing law modules. New to this edition: Introduction of new and updated Nursing Midwifery Council (NMC) Fitness to Practise procedures Reference to the NMC Code 2015 (updated 2018) including Duty of candour Data Protection legislation updated including reference to the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 Greater reference to the devolved UK administrations Updated overview of a nurses' duty of care Reference to the new NMC approved curriculum, and the introduction of nursing associates Introduction of upcoming changes to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Comprehensive discussion of the practice implications of the Supreme Court Decisions in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] Consideration of the revised Health and Social Care Act 2008 (regulated activities) regulations 2014 Updated consideration of gross negligence manslaughter Practical implications of the extension of the crimes of ill treatment and willful neglect under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 section 20 and 21

This important volume is the first to address the use of neuroimaging in civil and criminal forensic contexts and to include discussion of prior precedents and court decisions. Equally useful for practicing psychiatrists and psychologists, it reviews both the legal and ethical consideraitons of neuroimaging.

The Electronic Health Record: Ethical Considerations analyses the ethical issues that surround the construction, maintenance, storage, use, linkage, manipulation and communication of electronic health records. Its purpose is to provide ethical guidance to formulate and implement policies at the local, national and global level, and to provide the basis for global certification in health information ethics. Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly replacing the use of paper-based records in the delivery of health care. They are integral to providing eHealth, telehealth, mHealth and pHealth - all of which are increasingly replacing direct and personal physician-patient interaction - as well as in the developing field of artificial intelligence and expert systems in health care. The book supplements considerations that are raised by national and international regulations dealing with electronic records in general, for instance the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. This book is a valuable resource for physicians, health care administrators and workers, IT service providers and several members of biomedical field who are interested in learning more about how to ethically manage health data.

For the average person, genetic testing has two very different faces. The rise of genetic testing is often promoted as the democratization of genetics by enabling individuals to gain insights into their unique makeup. At the same time, many have raised concerns that genetic testing and sequencing reveal intensely personal and private information. As these technologies become increasingly available as consumer products, the ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges presented by genomics are ever looming. Assembling multidisciplinary experts, this volume evaluates the different models used to deliver consumer genetics and considers a number of key questions: How should we mediate privacy and other ethical concerns around genetic databases? Does aggregating data from genetic testing turn people into products by commercializing their data? How might this data reduce or exacerbate existing healthcare disparities? Contributing authors also provide guidance on protecting consumer privacy and safety while promoting innovation.

Spiritual Competence for Mental Health Professionals takes a holistic developmental approach toward spirituality in psychotherapy and counseling. This means that it considers an understanding of spiritual development to be as germane to mental health practice as an understanding of physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development and that it views spirituality as shaped by developmental processes. Common spiritual issues at each stage in the individual and family life course are discussed. Tools for understanding one's own and one's clients' spiritual orientations and goals along with interventions and practices that foster spiritual growth in the client and the practitioner are presented. Reflection and discussion topics are provided at the end of each chapter. Ultimately, this book aims to help mental health practitioners, educators and students to change their approach from 'meet the client where they are spiritually' to 'meet the client where they are spiritually and help them develop further.'

Several presidents have created bioethics councils to advise their administrations on the importance, meaning and possible implementation or regulation of rapidly developing biomedical technologies. From 2001 to 2005, the President's Council on Bioethics, created by President George W. Bush, was under the leadership of Leon Kass. The Kass Council, as it was known, undertook what Adam Briggle describes as a more rich understanding of its task than that of previous councils. The council sought to understand what it means to advance human flourishing at the intersection of philosophy, politics, science, and technology within a democratic society. Briggle's survey of the history of U.S. public bioethics and advisory bioethics commissions, followed by an analysis of what constitutes a "rich" bioethics, forms the first part of the book. The second part treats the Kass Council as a case study of a federal institution that offered public, ethical advice within a highly polarized context, with the attendant charges of inappropriate politicization and policy irrelevance. The conclusion synthesizes the author's findings into a story about the possible relationships between philosophy and policy making. A Rich Bioethics: Public Policy, Biotechnology, and the Kass Council will attract students and scholars in bioethics and the fields of science, technology, and society, as well as those interested in the ethical and political dilemmas raised by modern science.

Research increasingly suggests that addiction has a genetic and neurobiological basis, but efforts to translate research into effective clinical treatments and social policy needs to be informed by careful ethical analyses of the personal and social implications. Scientists and policy makers alike must consider possible unintended negative consequences of neuroscience research so that the promise of reducing the burden and incidence of addiction can be fully realized and new advances translated into clinically meaningful and effective treatments. This volume brings together leading addiction researchers and practitioners with neuroethicists and social scientists to specifically discuss the ethical, philosophical, legal and social implications of neuroscience research of addiction, as well as its translation into effective, economical and appropriate policy and treatments. Chapters explore the history of ideas about addiction, the neuroscience of drug use and addiction, prevention and treatment of addiction, the moral implications of addiction neuroscience, legal issues and human rights, research ethics, and public policy.

Hospital intensive care units have changed when and how we die-and not always for the better. The ICU is a new world, one in which once-fatal diseases can be cured and medical treatments greatly enhance our chances of full recovery. But, paradoxically, these places of physical healing can exact a terrible toll, and by focusing on technology rather than humanity, they too often rob the dying of their dignity. By some accounts, the expensive medical treatments provided in ICUs also threaten to bankrupt the nation. In an attempt to give patients a voice in the ICU when they might not otherwise have one, the living will was introduced in 1969, in response to several notorious cases. These documents were meant to keep physicians from ignoring patients' and families' wishes in stressful situations. Unfortunately, despite their aspirations, living wills contain static statements about hypothetical preferences that rarely apply in practice. And they created a process that isn't faithful to who we are as human beings. Further confusing difficult and painful situations, living wills leave patients with the impression that actual communication with their physicians has taken place, when in fact their deepest desires and values remain unaddressed. In this provocative and empathetic book, medical researcher and ICU physician Samuel Morris Brown uses stories from his clinical practice to outline a new way of thinking about life-threatening illness. Brown's approach acknowledges the conflicting emotions we have when talking about the possibility of death and proposes strategies by which patients, their families, and medical practitioners can better address human needs before, during, and after serious illness. Arguing that any solution to the problems of the inhumanity of intensive care must take advantage of new research on the ways human beings process information and make choices, Brown imagines a truly humane ICU. His manifesto for reform advocates wholeness and healing for people facing life-threatening illness.

The concept of smart drug delivery vehicles involves designing and preparing a nanostructure (or microstructure) that can be loaded with a cargo, this can be a therapeutic drug, a contrast agent for imaging, or a nucleic acid for gene therapy. The nanocarrier serves to protect the cargo from degradation by enzymes in the body, to enhance the solubility of insoluble drugs, to extend the circulation half-life, and to enhance its penetration and accumulation at the target site. Importantly, smart nanocarriers can be designed to be responsive to a specific stimulus, so that the cargo is only released or activated when desired. In this volume we cover smart nanocarriers that respond to externally applied stimuli that usually involve application of physical energy. This physical energy can be applied from outside the body and can either cause cargo release, or can activate the nanostructure to be cytotoxic, or both. The stimuli covered include light of various wavelengths (ultraviolet, visible or infrared), temperature (increased or decreased), magnetic fields (used to externally manipulate nanostructures and to activate them), ultrasound, and electrical and mechanical forces. Finally we discuss the issue of nanotoxicology and the future scope of the field.

In the last few years, several "bottom-up" and "top-down" synthesis routes have been developed to produce tailored hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs). This book provides a new insight into one of the most promising "bottom-up" techniques, based on a practical magnetron-sputtering inert-gas-condensation method. A modified magnetron-sputtering-based inert-gas-condensation (MS-IGC) system is presented, and its performances under different conditions are evaluated. Designed for graduate students, researchers in physics, materials science, biophysics and related fields, and process engineers, this new resource fills a critical need to understand the fundamentals behind the design and tailoring of the nanoparticles produced by the MS-IGC method. It shows that the morphology, the size and the properties of the nanoparticles can be modulated by tuning the deposition parameters such as the energy, the cooling rate, and the collision and coalescence processes experienced by the nanoparticles during their formation. The mechanisms of formation of different HNPs are suggested, combining the physico-chemical properties of the materials with the experimental conditions. This book illustrates the potential of MS-IGC method to synthesize multifunctional nanoparticles and nanocomposites with accurate control on their morphology and structure. However, for a better understanding of HNPs formation, further improvements in characterization methods of aggregation zone conditions are needed. In addition, the optimization of the yield and harvesting process of HNPs is essential to make this method sufficiently attractive for large-scale production.

In the last three decades, the human body has gained increasing prominence in contemporary political debates, and it has become a central topic of modern social sciences and humanities. Modern technologies - such as organ transplants, stem-cell research, nanotechnology, cosmetic surgery and cryonics - have changed how we think about the body. In this collection of thirty original essays by leading figures in the field, these issues are explored across a number of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, including pragmatism, feminism, queer theory, post-modernism, post-humanism, cultural sociology, philosophy and anthropology. A wide range of case studies, which include cosmetics, diet, organ transplants, racial bodies, masculinity and sexuality, eating disorders, religion and the sacred body, and disability, are used to appraise these different perspectives. In addition, this Handbook explores various epistemological approaches to the basic question: what is a body? It also offers a strongly themed range of chapters on empirical topics that are organized around religion, medicine, gender, technology and consumption. It also contributes to the debate over the globalization of the body: how have military technology, modern medicine, sport and consumption led to this contemporary obsession with matters corporeal? The Handbook's clear, direct style will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience in the social sciences, particularly for those studying medical sociology, gender studies, sports studies, disability studies, social gerontology, or the sociology of religion. It will serve to consolidate the new field of body studies.