Informed consent in psychotherapy: a survey on attitudes among psychotherapists in Switzerland.

Background: The legal and ethical guidelines of psychological professional associations stipulate that informed consent by patients is an essential prerequisite for psychotherapy. Despite this awareness of the importance of informed consent, there is little empirical evidence on what psychotherapists' attitudes towards informed consent are and how informed consent is implemented in psychotherapeutic practice.

Methods: 155 psychotherapists in Switzerland completed an online survey assessing their attitudes regarding informed consent.

The Advance Care Compass- A New Mechanics for Digitally Transforming Advance Directives.

Advance directives allow people to declare their treatment preferences for a potential future state of incompetency. Covid-19, with its high numbers of quickly deteriorating patients requiring intensive care, has acutely demonstrated how helpful it would be for clinicians to have reliable, readily available, up-to-date information at hand to be able to act in accordance with what the individual patient would have wanted. Yet for the past few decades advance directives have fallen short of their potential, for various reasons.

Key Factors in Decision Making for ECLS: A Binational Factorial Survey.

Background: Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) provides support to patients with cardiopulmonary failure refractory to conventional therapy. While ECLS is potentially life-saving, it is associated with severe complications; decision making to initiate ECLS must, therefore, carefully consider which patients ECLS potentially benefits despite its consequences.

Objective: To answer 2 questions: First, which medically relevant patient factors influence decisions to initiate ECLS? Second, what are factors relevant to decisions to withdraw a running ECLS treatment?

Methods: We conducted a factorial survey among 420 physicians from 111 hospitals in Switzerland and Germany.

Professional Identity Formation in Health Promotion Practitioners: Students' Perspectives during an Undergraduate Program in Switzerland.

The health promotion (HP) community advocates for capacity building, quality assurance and political awareness of HP. Professional identity (PI) is of great relevance to these goals as persons who strongly identify with their profession better adopt their professional role, raising the quality, competence and common values within a professional group. However, investigations on the HP workforce are missing.

A Novel Risk and Crisis Communication Platform to Bridge the Gap Between Policy Makers and the Public in the Context of the COVID-19 Crisis (PubliCo): Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Since the end of 2019, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on people around the globe. As governments institute more restrictive measures, public adherence could decrease and discontent may grow. Providing high-quality information and countering fake news are important.

Organ donation after euthanasia starting at home in a patient with multiple system atrophy.

Background: A patient who fulfils the due diligence requirements for euthanasia, and is medically suitable, is able to donate his organs after euthanasia in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. Since 2012, more than 70 patients have undergone this combined procedure in the Netherlands. Even though all patients who undergo euthanasia are suffering hopelessly and unbearably, some of these patients are nevertheless willing to help others in need of an organ.

Ethical Considerations Associated with "Humanitarian Drones": A Scoping Literature Review.

The use of drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UVAs) in humanitarian action has emerged rapidly in the last decade and continues to expand. These so-called 'humanitarian drones' represent the first wave of robotics applied in the humanitarian and development contexts, providing critical information through mapping of crisis-affected areas and timely delivery of aid supplies to populations in need. Alongside these emergent uses of drones in the aid sector, debates have arisen about potential risks and challenges, presenting diverse perspectives on the ethical, legal, and social implications of humanitarian drones.

Adopting an ethical approach to migration health policy, practice and research.

Migration health is affected by decision making at levels ranging from global to local, both within and beyond the health sector. These decisions impact seeking, entitlements, service delivery, policy making and knowledge production on migration health. It is key that ethical challenges faced by decision makers are recognised and addressed in research and data, clinical practice and policy making on migration health.

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current global systemic crisis reveals how globalised societies are unprepared to face a pandemic. Beyond the dramatic loss of human life, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread disturbances in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems in many countries across the world. Resilience describes the capacities of natural and human systems to prevent, react to and recover from shocks.

Case vignettes for simulated patients based on real patient experiences in the context of OSCE examinations: workshop experiences from interprofessional education.

Patient-centredness (PCN) is an increasingly demanded objective in health care and has gained importance for the care situation, for research, and the education of healthcare professions. The literature shows that the term PCN is not uniformly defined. Key aspects for the concept of PCN can be found in the integrative model and its dimensions by Scholl and colleagues (2014), which are incorporated into the acquisition of competencies in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) examination formats.

Current status of health systems financing and oversight for end-stage kidney disease care: a cross-sectional global survey.

Objectives: The Global Kidney Health Atlas (GKHA) is a multinational, cross-sectional survey designed to assess the current capacity for kidney care across all world regions. The 2017 GKHA involved 125 countries and identified significant gaps in oversight, funding and infrastructure to support care for patients with kidney disease, especially in lower-middle-income countries. Here, we report results from the survey for the second iteration of the GKHA conducted in 2018, which included specific questions about health financing and oversight of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) care worldwide.

A Swiss Health Care Professionals' Perspective on the Meaning of Interprofessional Collaboration in Health Care of People with MS-A Focus Group Study.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory autoimmune disease of the central nervous system mainly of adults ranging from 20 to 45 years of age. The risk of developing MS is 50% higher in women than in men. Most people with MS (PwMS) experience a spectrum of symptoms such as spasticity, continence dysfunctions, fatigue, or neurobehavioral manifestations.

Compulsory Interventions in Severe and Persistent Mental Illness: A Survey on Attitudes Among Psychiatrists in Switzerland.

Some psychiatric patients develop severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI), which, for a variety of reasons, can be therapy-refractory. Sometimes, treatment is not considered helpful by the patients themselves and does not improve their subjective quality of life. Furthermore, many SPMI patients experience compulsory interventions such as seclusion, restraint, or treatment against their will, which can cause harm.

Ethics of ICU triage during COVID-19.

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has placed intensive care units (ICU) triage at the center of bioethical discussions. National and international triage guidelines emerged from professional and governmental bodies and have led to controversial discussions about which criteria-e.g.

Challenges Posed by Transnational Commercial Surrogacy: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.

There is little consensus between European States regarding the legal treatment of surrogacy in general and of transnational commercial surrogacy in particular. Against this background, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in this matter is of particular significance since it provides some common ground for the legal treatment of transnational commercial surrogacy in Europe. For this reason, the present paper will outline the development of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR on transnational commercial surrogacy, giving particular attention to the Mennesson and Labassee decisions, the Paradiso/Campanelli case, and the 2019 Advisory Opinion.

Informal coercion during childbirth: risk factors and prevalence estimates from a nationwide survey of women in Switzerland.

Background: In many countries, the increase in facility births is accompanied by a high rate of obstetric interventions. Lower birthrates or elevated risk factors such as women's higher age at childbirth and an increased need for control and security cannot entirely explain this rise in obstetric interventions. Another possible factor is that women are coerced to agree to interventions, but the prevalence of coercive interventions in Switzerland is unknown.

Engineering Minds? Ethical Considerations on Biotechnological Approaches to Mental Health, Well-Being, and Human Flourishing.

Our bodies can be designed and modified in accordance with our ideals of health and well-being. These increasingly targeted and personalized interventions will be more effective than current therapies. Here we review technologies to alter mood, and explore the ethics of bioengineering approaches to mental health.