An 'ethics gap' in writing about bioethics: a quantitative comparison of the medical and the surgical literature

Ethics in the operating room: a systematic review

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE

The act of surgery involves harming vulnerable patients with the intent that the results will improve their health and, ultimately, help the patients. Such activities will inevitably entail moral decisions, yet the ethics of surgery has only recently developed as a field of medical ethics. Within this field, it is striking how few accounts there are of actions within the operating room. The aim of this systematic review was to investigate how much of the scientific publications on surgical ethics focus on what take place inside the operating room and to explore the ethical issues included in the publications that focus on medical ethics in the operating room.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic search of the Medline and Embase databases using a PICO model and the search terms "surgery", "ethics" and "operating room". Papers were included if they focused on doctors, entailed activities inside the operating room and contained some ethical analysis. Thematic synthesis was used for data extraction and analysis.

FINDINGS

Fewer than 2% of the scientific publications on surgical ethics included activities inside the operating room. A total of 108 studies were included in the full-text analysis and reported according to the RESERVE guidelines. Eight content areas covered 2/3 of the included papers: DNR orders in the OR, overlapping surgery, donation of organs, broadcasting live surgery, video recordings in the OR, communication/teamwork, implementing new surgical technology, and denying blood to Jehovah's Witness.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS

This systematic review indicates that only a small fraction of scientific publications on the ethics of surgery focus on issues inside the operating room, accentuating the need for further research to close this gap. The ethical issues that repeatedly arose in the included papers included the meaning of patient autonomy inside the operating room, the consequences of technological advances in surgery, the balancing of legitimate interests, the dehumanising potential of the OR, and the strong notion of surgeon responsibility.

AI and Ethics: A Systematic Review of the Ethical Considerations of Large Language Model Use in Surgery Research

INTRODUCTION

As large language models receive greater attention in medical research, the investigation of ethical considerations is warranted. This review aims to explore surgery literature to identify ethical concerns surrounding these artificial intelligence models and evaluate how autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice are represented within these ethical discussions to provide insights in order to guide further research and practice.

METHODS

A systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Five electronic databases were searched in October 2023. Eligible studies included surgery-related articles that focused on large language models and contained adequate ethical discussion. Study details, including specialty and ethical concerns, were collected.

RESULTS

The literature search yielded 1179 articles, with 53 meeting the inclusion criteria. Plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, and neurosurgery were the most represented surgical specialties. Autonomy was the most explicitly cited ethical principle. The most frequently discussed ethical concern was accuracy (n = 45, 84.9%), followed by bias, patient confidentiality, and responsibility.

CONCLUSION

The ethical implications of using large language models in surgery are complex and evolving. The integration of these models into surgery necessitates continuous ethical discourse to ensure responsible and ethical use, balancing technological advancement with human dignity and safety.

Representation of Ethics in the Plastic Surgery Literature: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

A 2009 systematic review demonstrated that ethical discourse was underrepresented in the plastic surgery literature; approximately one in 1000 articles contained ethical discussions. In the decade since, advances in plastic surgery and continued social progress have created new ethical dilemmas. However, it is unclear whether these developments have augmented the representation of ethics in the plastic surgery literature. A review of publications over the past decade can assess whether progress has been made and identify where deficits persist.

METHODS

The authors searched eight bibliographic databases to identify peer-reviewed articles discussing ethical issues in plastic surgery over the past decade. Independent reviewers extracted characteristics and ethical principles from included articles.

RESULTS

A total of 7097 articles were identified from the initial search and 531 articles were included for analysis. The principle of autonomy, present in 87.9 percent of articles, had the greatest representation, followed by beneficence (74.4 percent), nonmaleficence (72.3 percent), and justice (51.2 percent). Informed consent and face transplantation were the most prevalent topics discussed. Aesthetic surgery was the subdiscipline of plastic surgery with the greatest ethical discourse, representing 29.8 percent of all included articles.

CONCLUSIONS

In the past decade, there was approximately a five-fold increase in plastic surgery publications that include ethical discourse, indicating a growing awareness of ethical implications by the plastic surgery community. However, representation of ethical principles remained uneven, and specific subdisciplines of plastic surgery were substantially underrepresented. Plastic surgeons should adopt a more comprehensive approach when framing ethical implications in clinical and research settings.

Talking About Ethical Issues in Surgery-Results of a Novel Online Pilot Curriculum

OBJECTIVES

Surgical ethics has been suggested as a distinct field of study apart from clinical ethics due to a unique practice type and treatment dynamic. At our institution, most if not all teaching of clinical ethics is undertaken by nonsurgical faculty. We introduced a novel online Surgical Ethics Program (SEO) in a pilot form (SEO-P) for initial presentation to learners in our environment. The overall goal of our educational intervention was to enhance knowledge, understanding and appreciation for surgical ethics in medical students and to evaluate our curriculum.

SETTING

SEO-P was undertaken over a 4-week period in 2018 with 9 fourth-year medical students enrolled in a surgery elective at our institution. These learners all had career plans in general surgery or a surgical subspecialty. There was 3 weeks of content: (1) background in clinical ethics as it applies to surgical practice, (2) surgical consents and autonomy, and (3) the impaired physician. All pilot learners were evaluated with: (1) postprogram final exam assessment (compared to preprogram knowledge base test), (2) self-reflection essay of ethical practice in surgery, (3) evaluation of 2 case studies, and (4) an assessment of participation in online discussion forums. Postprogram survey of the learners was also undertaken in an anonymous fashion.

RESULTS

Four of 9 or 44.4% of students scored greater than or equal to 80% on the postprogram knowledge assessment test. A preprogram knowledge-based examination of all learners yielded a mean and standard deviation of 57.1 ± 6.0%. Postprogram knowledge-based test with mean and standard deviation was 78.8 ± 15%. This was a statistically significant increase in scores (p = 0.004; t test). All 9 passed the course with a mean final summative course grade of 95.2 ± 3.2%. From the postprogram evaluation survey, all 7 students who responded felt that the SEO-P would help them become an "ethical" practitioner. Surprisingly, only half of the learners (57.1%) thought "technology used to support the SEO Course (i.e., the chosen curriculum management system) was effective in conducting the course."

CONCLUSIONS

We set forth to use "web-based" technology to enhance exposure of medical students in our institution to surgical ethics. Hence, we designed our pilot curriculum to be a completely online offering. We feel that the utilization of the surgical voice, that is a surgical ethics curriculum developed by surgeons to explore surgically related clinical ethical issues, is an essential theme and goal of our program. Future challenges will be to present this voice in an effective manner with either an improved curriculum delivery system or by potentially utilizing a blended approach.

A systematic review of ethical principles in the plastic surgery literature

BACKGROUND

This purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review to identify articles that discuss ethical issues relating to the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery and to evaluate whether ethical issues are underrepresented in the plastic surgery literature.

METHODS

Four medical databases were selected to search through the medical literature with specific inclusion criteria to disqualify irrelevant articles from the study. Appropriate articles were extracted, and their quality and validity were assessed by multiple investigators to maximize reproducibility. The data were then synthesized and analyzed for associations among the ethical principles.

RESULTS

Of a total library search of more than 100,000 plastic surgery-oriented articles, only 110 clearly focused on ethical principles. Autonomy (53 percent) was the most common major theme, whereas distributive justice (15 percent) represented the least frequently emphasized ethical principle. The proportions of each ethical principle were tested against each other for equality using Cochran's Q test; the Q test reached statistical significance (Q = 67.04, df = 3, p < 0.0001), indicating that the ethical principles were not discussed equally in plastic surgery literature, which was expected because autonomy represented 53 percent of the articles, whereas distributive justice represented only 15 percent of articles. When examining both major and minor themes, more than half of the articles (61 percent) addressed two or more ethical principles. Beneficence and nonmaleficence were strongly associated (Pearson's chi = 55.38, df = 1,p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

Despite the extensive number of ethical issues that plastic surgeons face, a relatively small proportion of plastic surgery literature was dedicated to discussing ethical principles.

Ethics in the rheumatology literature: a systematic review

OBJECTIVE

To address the perception that ethical issues are underrepresented in the rheumatology literature, a systematic review was conducted using multiple databases to identify articles that addressed ethical and rheumatologic issues.

METHODS

A rheumatologist, research librarian, and clinician-ethicist designed queries for 4 electronic and ethics databases, searching for articles with content that was relevant to rheumatology/rheumatic diseases and that primarily focused on ethics. Based upon the Beauchamp and Childress framework, the retrieved articles were classified according to their ethical content, and the proportions addressing each Beauchamp and Childress ethical principle were analyzed using Cochran's Q statistic. Correlations between the appearance of discussions involving each of the 4 ethical principles were determined via chi-square analysis.

RESULTS

The total number of manuscripts in the rheumatologic literature with an ethical focus was 104 out of an estimated library of >400,000 rheumatologically oriented manuscripts (0.026%). Very few manuscripts consisted of original research studies. Nonmaleficence (66%) was the most common theme, whereas justice represented the least frequently addressed ethical issue (12%). The differences in the proportions of each ethical principle reached statistical significance (Q = 73.8, P < 0.0001). Only 8 articles addressed >2 ethical principles. Discussion touching on autonomy and nonmaleficence frequently appeared in the same article (Pearson's chi(2) = 14.9, P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Despite the frequency of ethical issues while caring for patients, few reports within the rheumatic disease literature have focused on ethical issues. Further work should ascertain the degree to which the literature addresses the ethical questions in rheumatology.

Ethics gap in surgery

BACKGROUND

Discussion of ethical issues occurs much less often in the surgical than in the medical literature. The reasons for this "ethics gap" are unknown.

METHODS

Our clinical faculty ranked the ethical and legal acceptability of four treatment options in two cases of surrogate decision making. Only one option in each case was ethically and legally unacceptable (treating despite objection by the surrogate decision maker).

RESULTS

Surprisingly often, faculty mistakenly believed the ethically unacceptable option to be acceptable, and the legally unacceptable option to be acceptable. Surgeons were not ethically different from other physicians. Surgeons (19 of 31, 62%), however, were significantly (p < 0.05) more likely than internists (18 of 51, 35%) or pediatricians (4 of 18, 22%) to believe, mistakenly, that operating on the baby without parental consent was legally acceptable.

CONCLUSIONS

This pilot study did not identify why the surgical literature contains a relative dearth of ethics discussion. Broader investigations are needed, because it is important that we understand the reasons for the gap. Surgeons' strong ethic of personal responsibility for patients' welfare should be transmitted to young trainees, a goal best achieved by discussing and writing about ethics. Moreover, our legal data suggest that a gap may also exist between surgeons and other physicians in understanding health law.