This debate article explores how smart technologies may create a double-edged sword for patient safety and effective therapeutic relationships. Increasing utilization of health monitoring devices by patients will likely become an important aspect of self-care and preventive medicine. It may also help to enhance accurate symptom reports, diagnoses, and prompt referral to specialist care where appropriate. However, the development, marketing, and use of such technology raise significant ethical implications for therapeutic relationships and patient safety. Drawing on lessons learned from other (...) direct-to-consumer health products such as genetic testing, this article explores how smart technology can also pose regulatory challenges and encourage overutilization of healthcare services. In order for smart technology to promote safer care and effective therapeutic encounters, the technology and its utilization must be safe. This article argues for unified regulatory guidelines and better education for both healthcare providers and patients regarding the benefits and risks of these devices. (shrink)

This debate article explores how smart technologies may create a double-edged sword for patient safety and effective therapeutic relationships. Increasing utilization of health monitoring devices by patients w...

The relation of knowledge to action and of theory to practice constitutes one of the most vital problems for human thought to-day. The classical philosophy, which the Catholic Church has inherited from the master-minds of ancient Greece, tends on the whole to rank theory above practice, and to maintain that ultimately we act for the sake of knowing. Characteristically modern thought, on the other hand, in most of its multifarious forms, inverts this order of precedence. We are commonly taught to-day (...) that knowledge exists for the sake of action, and that theories are to be judged true or false according to their tendency to promote or hinder those severely practical aims, the attainment of which must constitute the main business of living. It is with the causes of this change of mind, and the judgment which we ought to pass upon its general value, that I propose to deal in this article. (shrink)

Systematically improving patient safety is of the utmost importance, but it is also an extremely complex and challenging task. This illuminating study evaluates the role of professionalism, regulation and law in seeking to improve safety, arguing that the 'medical dominance' model is ill-suited to this aim, which instead requires a patient-centred vision of professionalism. It brings together literatures on professions, regulation and trust, while examining the different legal mechanisms for responding to patient safety events. Oliver Quick includes an examination in (...) areas of law which have received little attention in this context, such as health and safety law, and coronial law, and contends in particular that the active involvement of patients in their own treatment is fundamental to ensuring their safety. (shrink)

The modern situation: Causes and reasons for disbelief. Note: Desire for God as cause and reason for belief.--Two types of argument for belief. Note: The ontological proof.--Ideas of God in modern science and religion. Note: Bibliographical.--God in CHrist.

The cross in relation to metaphysical theory. -- The cross in relation to moral theory.