Dispatches from the hi-blogs.info krew

Keynote Lecture Tuesday 06.30.09 (0830 – 0915) June 30, 2009

Dr. Helena Leino-Kilpi, PhD, RN, titled “Ethics & nursing informatics – a multilevel perspective”. I am also trying to twitter the keynote concurrent with entries to this blog.

Nursing is human action (stress importance of values). Reviewed importance / current status of ethics in many health areas (health policies, patient rights, advances in tech solutions, public discussion as well as research results in nursing). Levels range of value base of individual nurse to value base of nursing to organization(s) to society (levels I – IV). Ethical problem defined as a value-based problem, no single solution, longstanding & need to separate from other problems (clinical, organizational, financial, and so forth). Importance of individual / professional nurse as individual in ethics of nurse & technologies / informatics. How do I use technology, how do I communicate, as well as attitude / approach to technology / informatics. Levels of ethical problems within all of these areas / questions. Leino-Kilpi’s review of literature lead her to note there is not definition of ethics or ethics competencies documented in NI literature. These are in all Level I.

Nursing as profession, Level II, ethical codes are somewhat present in the attitude, approach to technology/informatics but not in the other 2 areas (use of technology/informatics and communication about technology/informatics). Technology improves the realizaation of ethical principles of nursing care.  Level III organization level (administrator level), re: communication about, involves administration, leadership & management (Curtin L 2005. Ethics in informatics: The intersection of nursing, ethics and information technoology. Nursing Administration – didn’t get rest of cite). Technology impvoes the realization of ethical decision-making. She continues here review of all levels and details related to ethics in this arena.

Ethics & Health Technology Assessment (HTA); since 1970’s (Banta 2004); no clear focus (vander Wilt et al 2000); and more explicity in geeral technology assessment (TA, Hennen 2004). HTA definition from HTA Glosary 2006 is used by Leino-Kilpi in this presentation. HTA & ethics – importance -> implementation of HT may have moral consequenses, carries values & may challenge prevalent moral principles of society & HTA enterprise is value-laden. Ethcial questions in HTA/issues r/t define concepts, diagnostic procedures, preventive strategies, resesarch & resource allocation; all are ethical questions.

Two types of ethical anaylsis using HTA: ethics OF HTA and ethics IN HTA. Future research in this field is importance of ethical analysis and technology itself does not have any values, users / designers, though, do (citation: Bakken, S. (2008). A nursing informatics research agenda for 2008 – 2028: Contextual influences and key componentts. Nursing outlook, 55, 5, 206-214.).

Interesting presentation.