Conference At 3rd Faculty of Medicine Discussed Ethics in Patient Care

25 October 2010

The national conference for non-medical professions in healthcare called “Ethics in Patient Care” took place on October 22 at the Department of Nursing of the 3^rd Faculty of Medicine. In the packed Burian auditorium, six experts from the 3^rd Faculty of Medicine presents their talks on the following topics: nurses and responsibility, legal representation of patients in practice, nurses and ethics in intensive care, suffering as viewed by ethics, ethics of chronic disease care and teaching respect to human dignity. Co-organizer of the conference and a doctoral student at the Department of Ethics of the 3^rd Faculty of Medicine, Ms. Hana Svobodová, shared her insights about the role of ethics in nursing.

Can you introduce the conference? Who is it primarily aimed at?

This conference is a part of the IGA project, which should result in a textbook of ethics in nursing. Most participants at the conference are nurses. The Department of Nursing has been focusing on ethics in nursing for several years now, as we try to look at the topic from the perspective of non-medical fields. Medical ethics is under sufficient scrutiny. But problems encountered by nurses are just as important. The driving force behind the conference is Jana Heřmanová, a doctoral student of medical ethics. Today, she has presented the research we conducted on ethics in nursing.

To what extent are topics related to ethics well-established at faculties of medicine?

It has been a full-fledged class for several years now. At our faculty, ethics classes were introduced thanks to Dr. Jiří Šimek, the head of the former Department of Medical Ethics and Nursing, a physician with a huge interest in ethics. Those of us who were working under him were naturally inspired by his ideas. Ethics was later included in the nursing programmes. Each non-medical programme at our faculty now has ethics classes.

Why is ethics so important even for non-medical professions?

Because nurses are always in the immediate contact with the patients. They work with them very closely. Patients may have questions that the doctor does not manage to answer or that do not concern him. These questions may be related to the pain and suffering or to the particular choices that have been made during the treatment. The nurse must be prepared for these questions. In ethics in nursing, we also touch upon the topics of medical ethics, such as dying and euthanasia and usage of cell stems and embryos for research. We discuss topics such as human dignity, respect to the patient as a human being and responsibility for life. We seek inspiration throughout the world and strive to have as up-to-date and quality classes as possible.

(Lucie Kettnerová)

Translation: Jaroslav Švelch