Healthcare workers (HCWs) will be key players in any response to pandemic influenza, and will be in the front line of exposure to infection. Responding effectively to a pandemic relies on the ...majority of medical, nursing, laboratory and hotel services staff continuing to work normally. Planning assumes that during a pandemic normal healthcare service levels will be provided, although it anticipates that as caseloads increase only essential care will be provided. The ability of the NHS to provide expected service levels is entirely dependent upon HCWs continuing to work as normal.
This study is designed as a two-phase multi-method study, incorporating focus groups and a questionnaire survey. In phase one, qualitative methods will be used to collect the views of a purposive sample of HCWs, to determine the range of factors associated with their responses to the prospect of working through pandemic influenza. In phase two, the findings from the focus groups, combined with the available literature, will be used to inform the design of a survey to determine the generalisability of these factors, enabling the estimation of the likely proportion of HCWs affected by each factor, and how likely it is that they would be willing and/or able to continue to work during an influenza pandemic.
There are potentially greater than normal health risks for some healthcare workers working during a pandemic, and these workers may be concerned about infecting family members/friends. HCWs will be as liable as other workers to care for sick family members and friends. It is vital to have information about how motivated HCWs will be to continue to work during such a crisis, and what factors might influence their decision to work/not to work. Through the identification and subsequent management of these factors it may be possible to implement strategies that will alleviate the concerns and fears of HCWs and remove potential barriers to working.
In this paper, we point out some difficulties with interpreting three of five principles formulated at a retreat on robot ethics sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Council and the Engineering and ...Physical Sciences Research Council. We also attempt to iron out some conflicts between the principles. Some of the difficulties arise from the way that the autonomy of robot users - their capacity to live by their own choices - can be a goal in the design of care robots. We discuss (a) problems for Principle 2 that arise from competing legal and philosophical understandings of privacy; (b) a tension between privacy and safety (Principles 2 and 3) and (c) some scepticism about the application of Principle 4, which addresses robot design that might result in the deception of vulnerable users.
I first offer an account of serious crime that goes beyond victimizing crimes committed by individuals against other individuals. This approach extends the well-known framework offered by von Hirsch ...and Jareborg to include crimes undermining welfare-producing institutions. I then consider how the seriousness of crime justifies preventive measures, including the criminalization of acts preparatory to the commission of serious crime. I shall defend preventive measures, including highly intrusive ones, for the most serious crimes, such as terrorism in the form of mass killing, but I shall take issue with very expansive conceptions of serious crime that include what are intuitively much less serious offenses than terrorism or murder. In England and Wales, the Serious Crime Act (2007) lists relevant types of serious crime in its Schedule 1. This and other pieces of serious crime legislation in the UK are discussed critically.
Descartes Sorell, Tom
2000., 2000, 2000-10-12
eBook
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) had a short working life, and his output was small, yet his contributions to philosophy and science have endured. This book shows that Descartes was, above all, an advocate ...and practitioner of a new mathematical approach to physics, and that he developed his metaphysics to support his programme in the sciences.
This article considers the relation between public and private morality as a stumbling block to a unified moral theory, and therefore as a source of skepticism about moral theory. It aims to show ...that some of the difficulties for theory in this area are a product of assuming that private morality has a certain priority over the public, and that moral life is unitary. These assumptions are questionable and perhaps question-begging. If they are dropped, the strength of the requirements of public morality increases, and utilitarianism and other impersonal theories appear less problematic as theories of public life, and of the relation between public and private life.
A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ...ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developments.
Hobbes and History Rogers, G. A. John; Sorell, Thomas
2013, 2000, 20130111, 2013-01-11
eBook
Much of Thomas Hobbes's work can be read as historical commentary, taking up questions in the philosophy of history and the rhetorical possibilities of written history. This collection of scholarly ...essays explores the relation of Hobbes's work to history as a branch of learning.
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