Search

Turkey has experienced the longest hunger strikes and with the maximum participation in the last years. As a result, a total of 140 people died. On September 12, 2012, another hunger strike took place which terminated 68 days later, on November 18, 2012, with no fatalities. The impact of this was devastating as, for the first time, the nation witnessed the participation of children in hunger strikes. Hunger strikes cause physicians to experience serious ethical dilemmas. Moreover, children hunger strikers inevitably deepen these ethical dilemmas even more. The purpose of this article is to make an ethical evaluation of the hunger strike actions in general, aiming to focus on the hunger strikes of children which occurred as a new phenomenon on the ethical, legal and medical grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do healthcare professionals classify or characterize human beings: how do they identify and define a patient or in the case of this study a dead person? Healthcare professionals are fairly regularly exposed to human beings dying. Part of their duty is to postpone death but, death being inevitable, they regularly lose the fight. This study aims to determine how healthcare professionals classify human beings by asking only 1 question, and allowing respondents to provide 5 answers of their own making ("You are exposed to a dead person, victim of a car accident. Apart from name and surname, what are the 5 questions you would ask?"). Thereby, it is hoped to avoid both conflicts with responsibilities of healthcare professionals and predetermining the answers. As described above, one self-administered open question related to a very short story had to be answered anonymously and was asked by e-mail. As a result of the analysis, a number of stereotype question sets were obtained through the answers of the respondents. The stereotype questions and derived thought concepts provide an insight into the awareness and (prioritized) values of healthcare professionals in Turkey. In the replies, questions related to the personal background of the dead (such as age, marital status, and parenthood) had the highest frequency, while questions of professional relevance followed with medium frequency. A question relating to the consent of the deceased to organ donation was almost never asked. It is suggested that any potential educational material for healthcare personnel should be reviewed in order to increase awareness of relevant issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Public Health is the property of Turkish Journal of Public Health and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)