Ethical Issues of Informed Consent: Students as Participants in Faculty
Research
Phatcharapon Tulyakul, Soontareeporn Meepring
Global Journal of Health Science, 15 February 2020; 12(3)
Open Access
Abstract
Educators may face an ethical dilemma when they conduct research by using their own students as participants. The dual role conflict, coercion, confidentiality, misconstruction, and unawareness of the informed consent documents have been discussed as ethical issues in such faculty research. The educators as the researchers should be aware of these ethical dilemmas and attempt to implement the informed consent effectively. Thus, this article explores the ethical considerations of informed consent for the educational setting that students are recruited in the faculty research. Furthermore, this article represented recommendations for potentially resolving the ethical dilemmas of informed consent surrounding this phenomenon which consisted of eliminating dual role conflict and coercion, guarding confidentiality, and promoting good construction and awareness of the informed consent documents.

[Consent management and workflows for cross-sectoral patient records and teleconsultations]
Bauer J, Rohner-Rojas S, Holderried M
Der Radiologe, 14 February 2020
Abstract
Cross-enterprise electronic patient records are a key element in the design of interoperable medical care networks and process chains. However, the different requirements concerning type, performance and quality assurance of available communication services within the different healthcare sectors still require that the hospitals participate in various secure communication networks which have to be bridged for cross-sectoral communication. Cross-institutional pathways for telemedicine, however, can be mapped both within and across sectoral boundaries via automated process chains using the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) defined integration profile CrossEnterprise Document Sharing (XDS) and associated integration profiles. The provision of medical documents in a cross-institutional patient record outside of defined medical pathways requires differentiated authorization management. In this respect, consent documents according to the IHE APPC (Advanced Patient Privacy Consents) profile enable the documentation of the patient’s consent, including information about planned authorized people, document types, period and type of document access allowed. Providing access control to medical documentation by the patients themselves is an essential part of the required focusing of medical services on patients. New interoperability standards optimized for use on mobile devices, such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), will enable simplified delivery of patient-centered health records and other medical services on mobile platforms in the future.

Editor’s note: This is a German language publication. Der Radiologe is an internationally recognized publication. The journal is devoted to all aspects of radiology and serves to further train radiologists who are resident and who work in the clinic. 

The peculiar case of the Standards of Care: Ethical ramifications of deviating from informed consent in transgender-specific healthcare
Practices and concepts
Lipshie-Williams
Ethics, Medicine and Public Health, April – June 2020; 13
Summary
In this article, we discuss the alternate model of consent that has become dominant for the provision of transgender-specific health care within the United States, referred to here as the Standards of Care model. This model, which requires medical professionals to provide official opinions on a transgender patient’s readiness to accept and undergo care, stands in contrast to the majority model of medical consent in the US, namely individually provided informed consent. Here, we review the informed consent model, including the basic ethical components of this model and the essential elements of medical decision-making capacity. We then consider the Standards of Care model. We situate its origins in pathological understandings of gender variance and review the current requirements of the model. Consideration is given to logical inconsistencies within the current Standards of Care model, which holds that gender variance is non-pathological and affirming care is medically necessary, but that adult patients requesting such care require psychiatric diagnoses and are unable to consent to their own care. We then consider the bioethical meaning of the Standards of Care model, which others have proposed cedes some of the patient autonomy offered by informed consent for an inflated reliance on nonmaleficence. We align ourselves with this position. We continue this interpretation to suggest that the Standards of Care model ultimately fails to deliver this proffered nonmaleficence.