How to get serious answers to the serious question: 'How have you been?': subjective quality of life (QOL) as an individual experiential emergent construct

Article Abstract:

The weight of the various parameters in overall QOL, which is individual and emergent, is a matter of controversy. The primary endpoints in evidence-based healthcare research are, under the universalist humanist perspective, such as that of the World Health Organization (WHO), are expressed in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), with 'quality' difficult to measure. To maximize utility of QOL interventions a combined approach to measuring QOL is necessary. Classical endpoints of discrete health-related functions and duration of survival are seen as unacceptably reductionistic. The Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment (ACSA) and SF-36 instruments are discussed; change of QOL with treatment of allergic patients with cetirizine is considered as an example, as is treatment of end-stage metastatic solid cancer patients with palliative last-line chemotherapy and palliative care alone.

Belgium, Usage, Medicine, Measurement, Practice, Quality of life, Health surveys, Medical practice

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The foundations of bioethics

Article Abstract:

For ethical judgments, including those of bioethics, universalism makes sense. All observers in a certain context of an action should see it morally in one way. The observers would not be expected to actually reach agreement, but the feeling would be that they ought to, because otherwise moral discourse on a global scale would not make sense. The foundations of biomedical ethics, including theories of values, the virtues and of principles of right action, are discussed.

World, Medical personnel, Ethical aspects, Medical ethics, Transcript, Universalism, Relativism

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