Ethical Scenarios Research Articles

Emerging Molecular and Clinical Challenges in Managing Lung Cancer Treatment during the Covid-19 Infection

The COVID-19 pandemic now had a broad impact on the health care system since its start. Cancer patients, specifically lung cancer patients, are undergoing a more vulnerable group due to their complex pathophysiological and immunological characteristics. Therefore, they need more attention and care about health and treatment. It is yet unknown how SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infected lung cancer patient's health and management of treatment impacts them. From a clinical and multidisciplinary perspective, we aimed to explain our main priorities concerning COVID-19 infection in the scenario of lung cancer patients’ group in this chapter. Various types of lung cancer therapeutic strategies, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, can all significantly increase the risk, therefore making a patient's chances of a poor outcome higher. Patients with lung cancer need regular clinical and radiologic examinations and follow-ups, which the COVID-19 pandemic might hamper. COVID-19-related lung cancer patients’ incidental radiologic abnormalities might show up in regular radiology exams, making it challenging to understand disease progression and the effect of therapy. The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted lung cancer care, highlighting challenges in patient management, treatment outcomes, and ethical dilemmas. Quantitative analysis and exploration of future directions would enhance clinical and research impact. In addition, cancer treatment-induced pneumonitis can exhibit radiologic characteristics that are identical to those seen in acute SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia, possibly due to a wrong diagnosis and misinterpretation. The current COVID-19 health crisis is affecting many healthcare requirements, including the necessity for regular healthcare accessibility, particularly follow-ups, and the clinical trials in which this patient group may be included. The COVID-19 epidemic has placed healthcare practitioners, scientists, researchers, and institutions in a complex and dangerous situation, forcing them to address challenges with ethical scenarios.

Cognitive-Linguistic Status of Ethical Knowledge and Ways of Its Representation

The article is devoted to the study of the cognitive nature of ethical knowledge, its essence and substantive contours. There is no classification of ethical knowledge in science, so the formats of its representation and its types have not been determined. The aim of the article is to identify the cognitive foundations of morality, its rational or sensual nature; to determine the ethical knowledge based on its characteristics and classification according to types of representation in knowledge formats. To prove the representability of ethical knowledge a conceptual analysis of the concept “responsibility” is carried out; a value-labeled algorithm of a person’s moral behavior is presented in the ethical script. A cognitive ethical scenario of the category “compassion” is considered; an evaluative categorization of the concept’s “pity” and “ruthlessness” are given; a frame model of the concept “virtue” and the representability of ethical knowledge in knowledge formats (concept, scenario, evaluative categorization, frame, cognition) are constructed. The study also identifies features of ethical knowledge with their definitions, their classification that is carried out based on the criteria of what it is, and what it should be. The authors recognize the cognitive nature of ethical knowledge and consider it can be an information product of cognitive activity, that is tested for truth, expressed as new knowledge, while which person is evaluating behavior, represented in knowledge formats. In the article scientists’ points of view according to which ethical knowledge relates to the theoretical level of knowledge, metaethics or to the practical level of knowledge, practical ethics or philosophy are analyzed. The authors adhere to the statement that ethical knowledge has a dual nature (practical knowledge that regulates human behavior, theoretical knowledge, norms, principles, ethical knowledge). In the course of the research, the following scientific results were obtained: the cognitive essence of ethical knowledge was revealed confirmed by the features of its cognition (informativeness, truth, verifiability, knowability, representability). The authors’ positions which recognize the cognitive nature of ethical knowledge of cognitivists are reflected. The features of ethical knowledge with their definitions are identified; the classification of ethical knowledge is carried out based on the criteria of what it is and what it should be. The level of scientificity and practicality of ethical knowledge is determined. The conclusion is made about the existence of scientific (metaethics) and practical ethics; the cognitive measurability and representability of knowledge through knowledge formats has been proven. Conclusion about that the ethical knowledge has a cognitive status is drawn. The knowledge obtained as a result of cognitive-linguistic activity, provides new information about kinds of behaviour, ways of regulating value relations between people, knowledge about moral values, categories, norms verbalized with the help of language units.

A new approach to business ethics education: Virtual reality-based flipped learning

Paying attention to business ethics and educating ethical leaders and employees can impact organizational performance. Effective professional ethics education and learning can prevent administrative corruption, embezzlement and fraud in organizations. On the other hand, the development of digital technologies has created transformations in educational processes and methods. Evaluating the effectiveness of innovative teaching methods will greatly help the learning process of individuals and educational planning of business schools. Flipped learning is an educational approach in which students learn about course content before class. Accordingly, the aim of this research is to evaluate the impact of virtual reality (VR)-based flipped learning compared to the traditional method of teaching business ethics. This study was applied and quasi-experimental. Among business students of Shiraz University, 135 people were randomly divided into three groups. The first experimental group underwent training with the flipped learning method based on VR and the second experimental group underwent training with the traditional method and the third group was the control group. The control group didn't receive training and was selected only for the purpose of comparison with experimental groups. Pretest and posttest designs were used and the results of the three groups were compared using the Tukey test. The results showed that the two groups that received business ethics education had a significant difference compared to the control group. An important finding of this study revealed that among the two teaching methods, VR-based flipped learning had a greater impact on students' business ethics compared to the traditional teacher-centered approach. Accordingly, university managers and business ethics course instructors can facilitate the learning process using VR-based flipped learning. Designing simulation software for ethical scenarios is also a suitable solution for teaching business ethics.

Sustaining Ethical ePortfolio Practices: Insights from AAEEBL’s Task Force Year 4

This paper recognises the importance of digital ethics when using ePortfolios and provides information about the development of a comprehensive resource from the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL) Digital Ethics in ePortfolios Task Force’s four-year work. With the public release of ChatGPT addressing ethical challenges in education is critical. Over three years, the global Task Force diligently drafted, refined, and published a suite of digital ethics principles, strategies, scenarios, and resources, which is available as open source. In the fourth year (July 2022-June 2023), the Task Force formed three sub-groups to manage the growing number of objectives. The Development group explored intersections between principles and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), while evaluating data responsibility. The Outreach group disseminated the work through engaging workshops and publications, which also allowed the wider community feedback opportunities to further enhance the resources. Furthermore, the Research group undertook the ePortfolio Mapping Project to shed light on labour dynamics within ePortfolio practice across North America. The survey instrument was then adapted for data collection in Australia, and New Zealand. The paper highlights the significant achievements of these collective efforts, shares preliminary research findings, and offers valuable insights. It aims to promote ethical ePortfolio usage to enhance teaching, learning and assessment. Practitioner Notes Recognising potential ethical challenges in digital learning is critical. ePortfolios enable integrated learning experiences to meet a range of pedagogical objectives, including the tracking of learning processes as well as end artefacts. Learning how to apply ethical decision-making in using ePortfolios is essential. Comprehensive resources have been developed to assist educators, students, professional staff, and other digital pedagogy stakeholders. Research is underway into current ePortfolio practices which will inform future thinking, advocacy, and awareness.

Training beginning therapists to respond to basic ethical situations in therapy: deliberate practice vs case discussion

ABSTRACT In this small, randomly controlled pilot study, we compared deliberate practice (DP) with case discussion (CD) for training beginning therapists to manage basic ethical situations. First-year graduate students were randomly assigned to a DP (n = 7) or CD (n = 8) workshop about ethics in therapy. After receiving didactic instructions, the DP group practiced responding to ethical scenarios with feedback and repetition while the CD group engaged in group discussions of illustrative cases. Outcomes included self-report skills, knowledge, and confidence and blind ethical performance ratings (EPRS) of pre- and post-video recorded performance on eight therapy simulations portraying basic yet challenging ethical situations. Both DP and CD improved self-report and performance-based outcomes for beginning trainees learning to handle ethical situations in therapy. However, the DP group performed better than the CD group in the multiple relationship scenarios. This small, pilot study provides initial evidence that DP may provide added benefits to traditional methods of ethical training with beginning therapists.

Gender differences in school principals’ ethical decision-making processes

PurposeThis study will examine the school principals’ ethical decision-making processes and to explore gender-related differences.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a mixed-method research design, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with a sample of 10 male and 10 female principals, who were presented with ethical dilemma scenarios. The qualitative component utilized a phenomenological analysis, while additional quantitative analyses were performed on the same dataset to explore gender-related differences.FindingsOur analysis of principals' ethical evaluations identified three key areas where gender-related differences were evident: decision-making approaches, leadership styles, and philosophy/value orientations. The analysis revealed that women more frequently employed personal approaches, while men favored institutional approaches in their ethical evaluations. Secondly, men tended to adopt a democratic style, while women leaned towards an autocratic style. Finally, men exhibited a relativist orientation, while women displayed an idealist orientation in their ethical decision-making processes.Originality/valueGender-based analysis of school principals’ ethical decision-making process has remained an under-researched area. This study contributes to the understanding of gender-related differences in principals’ ethical decision-making processes.

Evaluating ChatGPT's moral competence in health care-related ethical problems.

Artificial intelligence tools such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) have been used for many health care-related applications; however, there is a lack of research on their capabilities for evaluating morally and/or ethically complex medical decisions. The objective of this study was to assess the moral competence of ChatGPT. This cross-sectional study was performed between May 2023 and July 2023 using scenarios from the Moral Competence Test (MCT). Numerical responses were collected from ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 to assess individual and overall stage scores, including C-index and overall moral stage preference. Descriptive analysis and 2-sided Student's t-test were used for all continuous data. A total of 100 iterations of the MCT were performed and moral preference was found to be higher in the latter Kohlberg-derived arguments. ChatGPT 4.0 was found to have a higher overall moral stage preference (2.325 versus 1.755) when compared to ChatGPT 3.5. ChatGPT 4.0 was also found to have a statistically higher C-index score in comparison to ChatGPT 3.5 (29.03 ± 11.10 versus 19.32 ± 10.95, P =.0000275). ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 trended towards higher moral preference for the latter stages of Kohlberg's theory for both dilemmas with C-indices suggesting medium moral competence. However, both models showed moderate variation in C-index scores indicating inconsistency and further training is recommended. ChatGPT demonstrates medium moral competence and can evaluate arguments based on Kohlberg's theory of moral development. These findings suggest that future revisions of ChatGPT and other large language models could assist physicians in the decision-making process when encountering complex ethical scenarios.

Development of Character Education Based on Tri Hita Karana with a Contextual Approach in Accounting Education: A Literature Review

The prevalence of unethical practices and the erosion of ethical values in the accounting profession underscore the need for integrating character education into accounting curricula. High-profile accounting scandals like Enron and WorldCom highlight the critical importance of fostering ethical behavior and social responsibility among future professionals. This literature review explores the integration of Tri Hita Karana, a Balinese philosophy promoting harmony among human-God, human-human, and human-environment relationships, with contextual learning in accounting education. The study suggests that incorporating Tri Hita Karana into the curriculum through community-based projects and real-world ethical scenarios enhances students' ethical and professional competencies. Empirical evidence from various studies supports the effectiveness of this integrated approach in developing students' ethical judgment, social and environmental awareness, and spiritual well-being. This holistic educational model not only prepares students for professional challenges but also promotes broader cultural shifts towards ethical integrity in professional practices.

Skin cancer decision-making in people with dementia.

This is an ethical scenario around the decision-making process in skin cancer patients, who lack capacity. It explores how to assess capacity, legal rights of family members, GMC recommendations and how best to support and care for these patients.

ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES REGARDING BIOETHICS AMONG STUDENTS IN DENTAL INSTITUTES OF PUNJAB

This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the levels of knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding bioethics among students enrolled in dental institutes across Punjab, India. A sample size of 202 students, including those exposed to clinical settings, participated in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to assess participants understanding of bioethical principles, their attitudes towards ethical dilemmas commonly encountered in dental practice, and their adherence to ethical standards in clinical settings. The findings revealed varying levels of knowledge among students, with notable disparities in understanding specific bioethical principles. Attitudinal responses highlighted a generally positive disposition towards ethical decision-making, although some students demonstrated uncertainty in navigating complex ethical scenarios. Furthermore, the study uncovered variations in the implementation of ethical practices among students in clinical settings. These findings underscore the importance of integrating comprehensive bioethics education within dental curricula to foster ethical awareness, enhance moral reasoning skills, and promote ethical conduct among future dental practitioners. Addressing these gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and practices is crucial for the cultivation of a morally conscious dental workforce capable of upholding the highest ethical standards in patient care and professional conduct.

The Effect of Group Dynamics on Individual Ethical Decision Making

ABSTRACT Given that many significant decisions in accounting are made by groups of professionals, it is important to understand the impact of group interactions on ethical decision making. We examine how group dynamics can influence an individual’s ethical evaluations and intentions and whether the effect of these group interactions persists in the future. We also explore the ethical orientations used by participants to inform their ethical judgments. Our results indicate that individual initial assessments of ethical scenarios are consistently more ethical than group assessments of the same ethical scenarios. Groups consistently viewed questionable actions as more acceptable than individuals and were more likely to say that they or their peers would perform the action. This less ethical perspective persists in future individual ethical assessments, demonstrating a contagion effect on ethical judgments. Furthermore, our results show that justice and relativism are the moral constructs utilized by most participants to form ethical evaluations. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors.

Constructing Ethical AI Based on the “Human-in-the-Loop” System

The Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) system was first proposed by Robert Monarch, a machine learning expert. It adopted a “hybrid” strategy combining human intelligence and machine intelligence, aiming to improve the accuracy of machine learning models and assist human learning. At present, there have been a number ethical design attempts based on the HITL system, and some progress has been made in the ethical choices of disaster rescue robots and nursing robots. However, there is no analysis of why the HITL system can serve as an effective path in constructing ethical AI and how it can implement the efficiency of AI in ethical scenarios. This paper draws on the feasibility of the HITL system and analyzes how ethical AIs are possible when using the HITL system. We advocate for its application to the entire process of ethical AI design.

MORAL REASONING AND INTENTION TO PERFORM UNETHICAL BEHAVIOUR OF LECTURERS IN MALAYSIA

The process of deciding what is right or wrong in a particular scenario is known as moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is important as it will help to shape an individual’s intention whether to perform or not to perform an unethical behaviour. This study will examine the level of moral reasoning of lecturers in public universities of Malaysia and examine its relationship to intention to perform unethical behaviour. The Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2) via N2 scores was used to measure the level of moral reasoning of lecturers. Intention to perform unethical behaviour was measured using ethical dilemmas scenarios. Online survey was sent to 30 lecturers of the Faculty of Business/ Management from 20 public universities. 130 responses were received, and data collected was sent to the Centre for the Study of Ethical Development University of Alabama for reliability test, scoring and analysis, as it is copyrighted. Only 83 responses passed the DIT2 reliability test and was then used for further analysis. The result shows that the N2 score of lecturers is at the low level of 23.39 which falls in Kohlberg’s Cognitive Moral Development stage 2 and 3 representing the personal interest schema. The study also found that moral reasoning of lecturers does not affect their intention to perform unethical behaviour. This could be because the level of moral reasoning of lecturers are at a low level and thus do not affect intention to perform unethical behaviour. Thus, efforts should be taken to develop the moral reasoning to a higher level such as exposing them to ethics courses and ethics training program that can increase their cognitive moral development to a higher level so that they do not only focus on self but also on law, social order and universal ethical principles.

S1719 Reliability Concerns: Can AI Interpret Nuanced Medical and Ethical Scenarios in the Field of Gastroenterology

S1719 Reliability Concerns: Can AI Interpret Nuanced Medical and Ethical Scenarios in the Field of Gastroenterology

Toward Evidence‐Based Cataloging Ethics: Research, Practice and Training in Knowledge Organization

ABSTRACTThis panel considers the bridge between research and practice in cataloging ethics. Cataloging ethics – including indexing and classification – is an important part of practice, yet cataloging ethics research and practice are not always clearly connected. The purpose of this panel is to build towards more evidence‐based cataloging ethics practice. Two main areas will be considered. The Cataloging Code of Ethics (2021) is a vital part of these discussions: this major codification of cataloging ethics was the result of both practitioner input and much research. This panel will discuss ways in which the Code can lead to more research‐informed practices. Teaching and training is a crucial – and under‐discussed – aspect of cataloging ethics, both within library and information science education and workplace training. Therefore, the panel will contemplate how training and teaching can germinate research‐based practices. The panel will be in three parts: a panel presentation about cataloging ethics, including each member's perspectives and experiences on teaching and training in cataloging ethics; small group discussions about real world cataloging ethics scenarios, utilizing the Code to generate discussion; and feedback to the whole group with a closing discussion about strengthening the relationship between practice and research in cataloging ethics.

Behavior-Based Ethical Understanding in Chinese Social News

Ethical understanding aims at morally analyzing and discriminating ethical scenarios described in natural language. By classifying behaviors that occur in ethical scenarios as ethical or unethical, ethical understanding empowers artificial intelligence systems to understand human values so as to discern right from wrong morally. However, most existing ethical understanding methods lack fine-grained analysis and cannot handle the problem that an ethical scenario may contain multiple behaviors with multiple polarities. In this paper, we introduce a novel natural language processing task, behavior-based ethical understanding (BEU), for mining the purpose relation(s) and ethical polarity of a specific behavior from the social news. It contains three subtasks: behavior term extraction (BTE) to extracts behavior terms, purpose relation inference (PRI) to identifies purposive relations among behaviors, and polarity discrimination (PD) to predicts the ethical polarities of behaviors, respectively. To perform this task, we constructed a Chinese BEU dataset, named FG-ETHICS. Besides, we propose a three-stage framework, BEU-BERT, based on the pre-trained language model BERT and deliberately designed downstream models for three subtasks. Experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves the best performance from the BTE and PD tasks, and achieves a promising performance of 75% on the PRI task.

An Analysis of Engineering Students’ Responses to an AI Ethics Scenario

In light of significant issues in the technology industry, such as algorithms that worsen racial biases, the spread of online misinformation, and the expansion of mass surveillance, it is increasingly important to teach the ethics and sociotechnical implications of developing and using artificial intelligence (AI). Using 53 survey responses from engineering undergraduates, this paper measures students' abilities to identify, mitigate, and reflect on a hypothetical AI ethics scenario. We engage with prior research on pedagogical approaches to and considerations for teaching AI ethics and highlight some of the obstacles that engineering undergraduate students experience in learning and applying AI ethics concepts.

Problem-based learning versus reflective practice on nursing students’ moral sensitivity

BackgroundMoral sensitivity is one of the prerequisites for nurses’ professional competency and patient care. It is critical to teach professional ethics in a student-centered manner in order to increase students’ moral sensibility. This study evaluated the effects of professional ethics education via problem-based learning and reflective practice on nursing students’ moral sensitivity.MethodsThis experimental study was performed on 74 nursing students who were randomly divided into three groups of problem-based learning, reflective practice and control. Principles of professional ethics were presented for the two intervention groups in four 2-hour sessions using ethical dilemmas scenarios. Participants completed the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire before, immediately, and three months after the intervention. Data were analyzed using SPSS16.ResultsDemographic characteristics of the three groups were similar (p > 0.05). The total moral sensitivity score significantly differed between the groups immediately and three months after the intervention (p < 0.001). The total mean score for moral sensitivity was significantly different between the two groups of problem-based learning and reflective practice, with the mean scores in the problem-based learning group being higher (p = 0.02). The mean score of moral sensitivity decreased statistically significantly in both experimental groups three months after the intervention as compared to immediately after the intervention (p < 0.001).ConclusionNursing students’ moral sensitivity can be increased through reflective practice and problem-based learning. While the results indicated that problem-based learning was more successful than reflective practice, additional research is recommended to confirm the influence of these two strategies on moral sensitivity.

Intensive Care Clinicians' Perspectives on Ethical Challenges Raised by Rapid Genomic Testing in Critically Ill Infants.

Rapid genomic testing (rGT) enables genomic information to be available in a matter of hours, allowing it to be used in time-critical settings, such as intensive care units. Although rGT has been shown to improve diagnostic rates in a cost-effective manner, it raises ethical questions around a range of different areas, including obtaining consent and clinical decision-making. While some research has examined the perspectives of parents and genetics health professionals, the attitudes of intensive care clinicians remain under-explored. To address this gap, we administered an online survey to English-speaking neonatal/paediatric intensivists in Europe, Australasia and North America. We posed two ethical scenarios: one relating to obtaining consent from the parents and the second assessing decision-making regarding the provision of life-sustaining treatments. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. We received 40 responses from 12 countries. About 50-75% of intensivists felt that explicit parental consent was necessary for rGT. About 68-95% felt that a diagnosis from rGT should affect the provision of life-sustaining care. Results were mediated by intensivists' level of experience. Our findings show divergent attitudes toward ethical issues generated by rGT among intensivists and suggest the need for guidance regarding ethical decision-making for rGT.

Implementing a Training Package to Instruct Trainees in the Assessment of Ethical Scenarios: Building Supervisory Repertoires

Implementing a Training Package to Instruct Trainees in the Assessment of Ethical Scenarios: Building Supervisory Repertoires