The knowledge and attitude of researchers can affect the validity of laboratory animal (LAN) research. However, studies show that not all researchers possess the required knowledge and appropriate attitude for performing valid research on animals. This may have several reasons, such as high heterogeneity in the educational backgrounds of researchers in animal trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ethical considerations are important in pandemic preparedness and response, however, there is a noticeable scarcity of ethical codes that are tailored to disease outbreaks and health emergencies.
Aim: To document the development of guidelines for ethical management of infectious disease outbreaks in Islamic Republic of Iran, as a model for low- and middle-income countries.
Methods: We conducted a non-systematic scoping review on PubMed and Google Scholar for drafting the guidelines for ethical management of infectious disease outbreaks in Islamic Republic of Iran.
The World Health Organization (WHO) addresses the governance of biorisks, including dual-use research, for countries. It emphasizes engaging multisectoral stakeholders such as governments, scientific bodies, health and research institutes, standard-setting organizations, funding bodies, and others. Ethics constitutes a key component of the framework.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConsidering the importance of respecting and observing patients' rights, this study aimed to assess the level of observance of hospitalized patients' rights from both patients' and health-care workers' (HCWs) perspectives. This cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study reports the responses of 486 patients and 887 HCWs in a public referral university hospital. The study illustrates that patients and HCWs think patients' rights are respected at a medium level; however, HCWs reported lower levels of respect for patients' rights than patients, and senior HCWs reported even lower levels than their younger colleagues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe right to health is an internationally recognized and established human right with a long history of appreciation, indicating that governments should guarantee the highest possible level of access to health and provide health-care serivces with no discrimination based on nationality, race, gender, language or religion. The present study explored this topic using an analytic-descriptive approach. We reviewed related laws, policies and other available documents with the aim to investigate the ethico-legal aspects of Afghan refugees' and immigrants' access to health care and the challenges in in this regard within the Iranian health law system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the intricate tapestry of Iran's geopolitical, cultural, and economic landscape, the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed profound changes. This essay delves into the multifaceted impact of the pandemic on Iranians' lives, dissecting the specific nuances shaped by the complex biopolitical environment. We unravel the subtle imprints of COVID-19 on the biopolitical discourse, exploring how it intricately intertwines with daily life, social interactions, and the nation's health system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Providing unnecessary healthcare services is a major common problem in every health system. The scope and cause of healthcare services must be identified in order to be managed and controlled. Finding the most complete definition of the problem and its causes are the goals of this meta-synthesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe concept of individual freedom has complex and multifaceted dimensions that significantly affect the limits of permissible government interventions aimed at restricting such freedoms and maintaining public health. Therefore, the boundary between individual freedom and the social obligations of the government must be carefully clarified. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for such clarifications clearly increased.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Priority-setting for early access to vaccines during a pandemic optimizes the impact of vaccine rollout, however, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have little experience in policymaking on this. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the national clinical ethics committee developed a policy for early access to COVID-19 vaccines with support from the national committee on COVID-19 vaccine.
Aims: This paper reports the process and results of a national COVID-19 vaccine priority-setting in the Islamic Republic of Iran and discusses its ethical and cultural aspects.
Background And Aims: COVID-19 pandemic led to a need to rapidly vaccinate as many people as possible. Children are an important part of the population with different characteristics which vaccinating them is a matter of great importance as it should be decided considering all aspects and ethics. Here, we present different aspects of COVID vaccination in children including the potential challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe basis of truth-telling is respecting the autonomy of patients and developing an ability to make informed decisions with valid consent. The purpose of this study was to ethically analyze the conflicts about truth-telling in dentistry. This case analysis focused on the issues of truth-telling in medicine and dentistry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtection of patients' rights is critical in improving healthcare quality, and hence this study aimed at reviewing patient rights' practices in healthcare organizations of Iran. Using systematic search, this review was conducted based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P). Several keywords, including "patient rights", "patient bills of rights" and "patients rights' charter" were searched bilingually in the databases of SID, Magiran, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science from 2010 to 2021, and then, following a three-tier screening using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) checklists, 76 articles were extracted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTelemedicine can improve access to healthcare services; however, it has raised ethical concerns demanding special considerations. This study aimed at developing the codes of ethics for telemedicine, and hence several approved national and international ethical guidelines related to telemedicine practice were reviewed, and 48 semi-structured interviews were conducted with medical ethics and medical informatics experts as well as with physicians and patients who had telemedicine experiences. Content analysis was then performed on the interviews' transcripts and a draft on code of ethics was prepared, which was further reviewed by the experts in the focus group meetings to reach a consensus on the final document.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedical ethics faces several challenges in different aspects of education, research, and treatment in medicine and healthcare practice. Design and implementation of a national strategic plan can pave the way for the development of a roadmap in various countries to strengthen ethics and address these challenges. To create a comprehensive plan compatible with the Iranian healthcare system, a multidisciplinary team of main stakeholders compiled a national strategic plan of medical ethics following several focus group discussion sessions and two workshops (2014-2017).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrinciples of 3Rs are the backbone of today's animal research. Applying 3Rs in practice requires proper education and training. Although this could be achieved via long-term courses ranging from several weeks to years, in some circumstances a short-term course may be the only viable option.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile the degree of COVID-19 vaccine accessibility and uptake varies at both national and global levels, increasing vaccination coverage raises questions regarding the standard of prevention that ought to apply to different settings where COVID-19 vaccine trials are hosted. A WHO Expert Group has developed guidance on the ethical implications of conducting placebo-controlled trials in the context of expanding global COVID-19 vaccine coverage. The guidance also considers alternative trial designs to placebo controlled trials in the context of prototype vaccines, modified vaccines, and next generation vaccines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) is a multistakeholder initiative quickly constructed in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic to respond to a catastrophic breakdown in global cooperation. ACT-A is now the largest international effort to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies, and its governance is a matter of broad public importance. We traced the evolution of ACT-A's governance through publicly available documents and analysed it against three principles embedded in the founding mission statement of ACT-A: participation, transparency, and accountability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe code of ethical conduct for physiotherapy services must be compatible with the local culture. The ethical guidelines proposed here were developed through a literature review, focus group discussions, and finally a modified Delphi technique to achieve consensus after the data were analysed. At first, the collection of different ethical codes yielded 132 items.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVentilator allocation plan for a public health crisis should be developed through recognizing the values of society and engaging the general public. This study was conducted to assess the Iranian citizens' attitude about some principles and criteria for allocation of ventilators in the current COVID-19 epidemic. An electronic self-administered questionnaire was publicly distributed through social networks of Telegram and WhatsApp to perform this cross-sectional study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF