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While the principle of autonomy is widely regarded as a fundamental principle of biomedical ethics, it is not completely clear how that principle should be understood. The purpose of this article is to identify a reasonable concept of autonomy within the context of contemporary neo-liberalist individualism. Neoliberalism developed out of the liberal tradition that emphasizes individual rights and freedoms. However, the concept of autonomy at the root of this rights-based view has been transformed through the quantitative expansion of, and qualitative changes to, individualism. In this article I discuss and reconsider the meaning of autonomy in terms of “an individual” as reflected in the spirit of neo-liberal individualism. I argue that while competition and accumulation are thought to be virtues of contemporary life, liberty should be understood, not in terms of liberty from interference, but rather in terms of liberty from the severe inequalities caused by the dominant social relations. This notion of liberty as non-domination is central to a more robust and meaningful principle of autonomy.

This article explores the biomedical ethics education module that is used in the UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum. Many universities across several countries have not yet incorporated bioethics into their curriculums. We believe that introducing UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum Casebook Series in universities will provide an incentive to include such a module in study programs, thus offering a strong foundation for the teaching and learning of biomedical ethics. In this article, the authors describe how they introduced teachers and students to the UNESCO-Bioethics Core Curriculum, based on the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and then examined the model of biomedical ethics education provided in the UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum Casebook Series. As per the curriculum, the authors suggest that the teaching module should include the following four elements: objectives, content, methods, and evaluation.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship of biomedical ethics awareness, self-esteem, family strengths between non-nursing college students and nursing college students. The participants were 345 students in South Korea. The statistical analyzed include descriptive statistic of the respondents’ general characteristics, an the data were analyzed with a t-test and a correlation using the SPSS WIN 20.0 program. The average score of nursing college students for biomedical ethics awareness was 2.89±.20 (using a 4-point Likert scale) and the average score of non-nursing college students was 2.87±.23. Nursing college students and non-nursing college of biomedical ethics awareness in the artificial insemination of factors appeared to have meaningful difference (t=2.64, p<.001). Biomedical ethics awareness showed a positive correlation with self-esteem(r=.212, p<.001). And right to life of fetus of biomedical ethics awareness showed a positive correlation with family strengths. The results of this study suggest that biomedical ethics education should need for general college students.

Nurses are frequently faced with ethical dilemmas in their nursing practice. Nurse can experience moral distress when they know the morally correct response to a situation but cannot act accordingly because of institutional or hierarchical constraints. The aim of this integrated review was to synthesize the available quantitative and qualitative evidence in the literature on moral distress experienced by nurses. We appraised seven articles published between January 1984 and December 2015. This review revealed that many nurses in South Korea experience moral distress associated with difficult care situations and feel negative psychological symptoms, which can have an impact on their job performance. Further research is required to examine workplace strategies to support nurses in these situations and to develop coping strategies for dealing with moral distress.

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence nurses’ intentions to report medication errors and, more specifically, to investigate the relationship between nurses’ intentions to report medication errors, the organizational culture in nursing, and nurses’ communication styles. The participants were 117 nurses from six hospitals in South Korea. The data were analysed with a t-test, ANOVA, conducted correlation, and a regression analysis using SPSS version 19.0. The factors affecting nurses’ intention to report medication errors were nurses’ horizontal communication styles and the business-oriented organizational culture. Additionally, nurses’ intentions to report medication errors were significantly correlated with business-oriented culture, and horizontal communication. Based on the results of this study, the formation of a positive organizational culture is important in order to increase the number of nurses who are willing to report medication errors.

This study was designed to assess the level of concern and awareness of biomedical ethics among nursing students and to identify the factors that might be influencing or correlated with nursing students’ level of awareness of biomedical ethics. Participants were 435 nursing students in one nursing college in South Korea. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, an independent t-test, a one way ANOVA, a Scheffé test, a Pearson Correlation, and a Multiple Regression. The most influential factor for awareness of biomedical ethics was concern of bioethics (β=.517, p<.000), followed by teaching methods (β=.129, p=0.02), age (β=.115, p=.004), desire to study ethics (β=.103, p=.011), interesting teaching methods (β=.096, p=.016), effective teaching methods (β=.090, p=.016) and information source (β=.079, p=.026). These factors accounted for 34.9% of the variance in awareness of biomedical ethics (F=158.279, p=.000). Using the results of this study strategies can be developed to increase the awareness of biomedical ethics among nursing students.

This article examines the 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea in terms of the ethics of public health emergencies. A public health emergency is defined as a severe, sudden, and unpredictable threat to public health, which poses a substantial risk to normal social functioning. In response to public health emergencies legal rights may be suspended and individual liberties may be violated. Among the many ethical principles that are relevant in public health emergencies are protecting the public from harm, justice and fairness, liberty and respect, reciprocity, and duty to treat. The 2015 MERS outbreak raised several ethical issues, including the following, which are discussed in this article: 1) Ethical deliberation in preparing for public health emergencies, 2) balancing privacy and transparency, 3) respecting individual liberty in quarantine, and 4) ensuring that the duty to treat is respected

Overtreatment (or unnecessary treatment) occurs when medical services are provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. Of course, practicing good medicine and avoiding unnecessary harm have always been principles of medical practice. Currently there is a new emphasis on reducing practices that are likely to have limited benefit or that involve potential harm. Waste due to overtreatment has been described as a violation of the principle of justice on the assumption that every system has limited resources and any wasted resource necessarily means those resources will no longer be available for use by others in need. Overtreatment may also cause direct harm to patients, thus violating the principle of nonmaleficence. Physicians are rarely motivated by the desire to achieve system efficiency or to save money for its own sake. However, it is widely understood that physicians should be motivated by a desire to do the right thing in terms of promoting the patient’s best interest. And doing the right thing includes an ethical imperative to provide parsimonious care. Recognizing this fact helps to bridge the enormous quality chasm that still exists between the medical care that is currently provided and the medical care that should be provided. The purpose of this study is to identify and assess the factors that cause overtreatment (unnecessary treatment) in the Korean medical system and to suggest certain solutions to this problem.