Occupational Health Ethics

This book provides occupational health (OH) professionals with a theoretical basis for addressing the ethical issues that they confront in their practice. There is often a lack of in-depth moral analysis of the issues that OH practitioners face on a daily basis. The ICOH Code of Ethics sets out the important principles that guide OH practice. This book builds on these core principles, starting from an application of moral theories in the OH context and illustrating how ethical conflicts could be resolved, by carrying out ethical analyses of several case studies. In this way, it aims to link ethical theory to OH practice.

Explains the NHS as a political environment, and concentrates on understanding the relationships of power rather than on the role of apparent authority. The book presents a range of management frameworks and personal examples to illustrate what a primary-care-led NHS means.

Much of the previous literature in the field of safety focuses on either the technical equipment issues or the human performance factors that contribute to the active failures in safety-critical systems. However, this book provides guidance in the moral or ethical aspects of decision-making that perpetuate many of the latent failures in safety-critical systems. The book provides a concise introduction to the ethical foundations and follows up with case studies from aviation, healthcare, and environmental and occupational health.

Occupational Health Practice is a comprehensive account of the practice of protecting and improving the health of people at work, with some emphasis on the special needs of workers in developing countries. Topics covered by this book include the functions of an occupational health service; special examinations in occupational medicine; uses and methods of epidemiology; and ergonomics. The mental health of people at work, prevention of occupational disease, and ethics in occupational health practice are also discussed. This book is comprised of 22 chapters and begins by outlining national developments in occupational medicine, along with the different forms of service provided by private enterprise and the state. The factors that influence a nation or an industrial organization to pay attention to the health of people at work are also considered. The discussion then turns to the importance of health to one's work, the functions of an occupational health service, and prevention of accidents and occupational disease. Methods used in the study of groups of workers are described in sections on epidemiology, field surveys, and the collection and handling of sickness absence data. The text also looks at ergonomics, occupational hygiene, and ethics and education in occupational health. This monograph will be useful to physicians, hygienists, nurses, and safety officers working in the field of occupational health; to those whose interests encompass occupational health, but cannot attend a course; and to medical and non-medical specialists in related fields.

Natural disasters and cholera outbreaks. Ebola, SARS, and concerns over pandemic flu. HIV and AIDS. E. coli outbreaks from contaminated produce and fast foods. Threats of bioterrorism. Contamination of compounded drugs. Vaccination refusals and outbreaks of preventable diseases. These are just some of the headlines from the last 30-plus years highlighting the essential roles and responsibilities of public health, all of which come with ethical issues and the responsibilities they create. Public health has achieved extraordinary successes. And yet these successes also bring with them ethical tension. Not all public health successes are equally distributed in the population; extraordinary health disparities between rich and poor still exist. The most successful public health programs sometimes rely on policies that, while improving public health conditions, also limit individual rights. Public health practitioners and policymakers face these and other questions of ethics routinely in their work, and they must navigate their sometimes competing responsibilities to the health of the public with other important societal values such as privacy, autonomy, and prevailing cultural norms. This Oxford Handbook provides a sweeping and comprehensive review of the current state of public health ethics, addressing these and numerous other questions. Taking account of the wide range of topics under the umbrella of public health and the ethical issues raised by them, this volume is organized into fifteen sections. It begins with two sections that discuss the conceptual foundations, ethical tensions, and ethical frameworks of and for public health and how public health does its work. The thirteen sections that follow examine the application of public health ethics considerations and approaches across a broad range of public health topics. While chapters are organized into topical sections, each chapter is designed to serve as a standalone contribution. The book includes 73 chapters covering many topics from varying perspectives, a recognition of the diversity of the issues that define public health ethics in the U.S. and globally. This Handbook is an authoritative and indispensable guide to the state of public health ethics today.

To achieve sustainable progress in workplace and societal functioning and development, it is essential to align perspectives for the management of health, safety and well-being. Employers are responsible for providing every individual with a working environment that is safe and does not harm their physical or mental health. However, the current state of the art indicates that approaches used to promote health, safety and well-being have not had the anticipated results. At the level of the enterprise it is widely understood and accepted by all stakeholders that employers share the responsibility of promoting and managing the health of their workers. Evidence indicates that most employers put in place procedures and measures to manage workers’ health and create healthy workplaces to meet legal requirements, as a response to requests by employees, as a need to improve company image/reputation, and to improve productivity. This highlights that in addition to legal requirements, the key drivers for companies also include the ethical and business case. While much has been written about role of legislation and the business case for promoting health, safety and well-being, not much is known about the ‘ethical case’ for promoting employment and working conditions. In this context, this book examines the potential of the link between responsible and sustainable workplace practices, human rights and worker health, safety and well-being and explores how complementary approaches can be used to promote employment and working conditions and sustainability at the organizational level. It offers a framework for aligning different approaches and perspectives to the promotion of workers’ health, safety and well-being and provides recommendations for introducing such an approach at the enterprise level.

This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.