Karen Sanders

The conference entitled ‘Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision-Making’, held in London 8–9 July 2010, was the first of its kind dedicated to identifying best practices in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making. Academics, health and social care professionals, clinical ethics committee members, lawyers, service users and carers from the UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia attended lectures, workshops, parallel paper sessions and clinical ethics case discussions across adult, maternity, children's, older persons, mental health and learning disabilities settings. Seventy-eight best-practice points impacting on the quality of clinical ethics consultations and subsequent decisions were identified and grouped into eight themes: who tells the story; how the story is told; how the analysis, discussion and subsequent decisions are made; how values are weighted and balanced against one another; who decides; how the decision is made; how group dynamics and conflict are handled; how decisions are recorded

In this paper, we reflect upon shame and humiliation as threats to personal and professional integrity and moral agency within contemporary health care. A personal narrative, written by a nurse about a particular shift in a British National Health Service Accident and Emergency Department, is provided as a case study. This is critically reflected and commented upon in dialogue with insights into the nature of shame and humiliation. It is suggested that Accident and Emergency is a locus that is latently prone to dynamics of shame and humiliation, a potential exacerbated within a culture subject to externally‐determined time targets that are enforced by a top‐down system of surveillance and management. The result is that nurses may lose their sense of professional competence and responsibility, moral agency, and integrity, to their own personal detriment, as well as to the detriment of patients with whom they work. Insofar as examining a small part of a whole may suggest insights into the operation and ethos of a very large system, this very particular case study narrative/reflection has some important implications and lessons for the wider organization and provision of health care in Britain and beyond.

The volume provides a comprehensive discussion of enduring and emerging challenges to ethical journalism worldwide. The collection highlights journalism practice that makes a positive contribution to people's lives, investigates the link between institutional power and ethical practices in journalism, and explores the relationship between ethical standards and journalistic practice. Chapters in the volume represent three key commitments: 1) ensuring practice informed by theory, 2) providing professional guidance to journalists, and 3) offering an expanded worldview that examines journalism ethics beyond traditional boundaries and borders. With input from over 60 expert contributors, it offers a global perspective on journalism ethics and embraces ideas from well-known and emerging journalism scholars and practitioners from around the world. The Routledge Companion to Journalism Ethics serves as a one-stop shop for journalism ethics scholars and students as well as industry practitioners and experts.

What are ethics? Why does ethical journalism matter? How do ethics affect good journalism? Ethics and Journalism provides a comprehensive overview of the main approaches to ethical enquiry in Western journalism. It examines the ethical dilemmas faced by journalists in all areas of the media and sets our ways of achieving ethical journalism. Ethics and Journalism: - Explores such subjects as: private lives and the public interest, relations to sources and coverage of death, disease and destruction - Examines the role of regulation and self-regulation of the media industry - Discusses strategies of good journalism - Thoroughly examines the role of industry codes. Ethics and Journalism is informed by interviews with top journalists and editors and is written in a clear and accessible style. It includes an exhaustive bibliography as well as an excellent list of relevant web-sites. It will be essential reading for all journalism, media and politics students studying journalism and ethics, as well as for those who already work in the media and are interested in understanding ethical issues.