William F. Sullivan

Healing Relationships and Transformations in Health Care: IACB Consensus Statement on Ethical Discernment and Practical Recommendations

1. Healing relationships are essential to good-quality health care.1 Some significant transformations in health care, however, are affecting how patients and their families relate to healthcare professionals. For example, patients today are likely to receive care from multiple healthcare professionals or a healthcare team; public health interventions offered by healthcare professionals target populations rather than individual patients; healthcare professionals increasingly use analysis of health information from large numbers of patients (“big data”) and are asked to consider

Promoting Mental Health: IACB Statement toward a Shared Medical and Christian Ethical Framework

1. Everyone should be concerned about promoting mental health. This statement proposes a shared medical and Christian ethical framework for promoting mental health. The statement affirms that: • Mental health should be understood holistically to take into account interactions among the biological, psycho-affective, social and spiritual aspects of human beings; the social and environmental determinants of health; the need of human beings to find meaning and value in their lives. • Mental health is a basic human good. Mental health care should be supported and promoted as vigorously as physical health care. • Christians and other religious communities should lead in fostering awareness of the importance of excellent mental health care and promote mental Promoting Mental Health

Palliative Sedation and the Goals of Care at the End of Life

The term palliative sedation covers a range of current practices. Some have argued that the ethical boundary distinguishing palliative sedation from euthanasia is becoming blurred in a number of these practices (Ten Have and Welie 2014; Hauser and Walsh 2009). Recent policy frameworks and guidelines that have been developed by health care institutions or groups of clinicians in different countries are not consistent in terminology or the medical and ethical guidance that they provide (Taboada 2011; Claessens et al. 2008).