BackgroundRecently, individualized or personalized medicine (PM) has become a buzz word in the academic as well as public debate surrounding health care. However, PM lacks a clear definition and is open to interpretation. This conceptual vagueness complicates public discourse on chances, risks and limits of PM. Furthermore, stakeholders might use it to further their respective interests and preferences. For these reasons it is important to have a shared understanding of PM. In this paper, we present a sufficiently precise as well as adequate definition of PM with the potential of wide acceptance.MethodsFor this purpose, in a first step a systematic literature review was conducted to understand how PM is actually used in scientific practice. PubMed was searched using the keywords “individualized medicine”, “individualised medicine”, “personalized medicine” and “personalised medicine” connected by the Boolean operator OR. A data extraction tabloid was developed putting forward a means/ends-division. Full-texts of articles containing the search terms in title or abstract were screened for definitions. Definitions were extracted; according to the means/ends distinction their elements were assigned to the corresponding category. To reduce complexity of the resulting list, summary categories were developed inductively from the data using thematic analysis. In a second step, six well-known criteria for adequate definitions were applied to these categories to derive a so-called precising definition.ResultsWe identified 2457 articles containing the terms PM in title or abstract. Of those 683 contained a definition of PM and were thus included in our review. 1459 ends and 1025 means were found in the definitions. From these we derived the precising definition: PM seeks to improve stratification and timing of health care by utilizing biological information and biomarkers on the level of molecular disease pathways, genetics, proteomics as well as metabolomics.ConclusionsOur definition includes the aspects that are specific for developments labeled as PM while, on the other hand, recognizing the limits of these developments. Furthermore, it is supported by the quantitative analysis of PM definitions in the literature, which suggests that it it is widely acceptable and thus has the potential to avoid the above mentioned issues.

Background:While there is increasing evidence that Advance Care Planning has the potential to strengthen patient autonomy and improve quality of care near the end of life, it remains unclear whether it could also reduce net costs of care.Aim:This study aims to describe the cost implications of Advance Care Planning programmes and discusses ethical conflicts arising in this context.Design:We conducted a systematic review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement.Data sources:We systematically searched the databases PubMed, NHS EED, EURONHEED, Cochrane Library and EconLit. We included empirical studies (no limitation to study type) that investigated the cost implications of Advance Care Planning programmes involving professionally facilitated end-of-life discussions.Results and discussion:Seven studies met our inclusion criteria. Four of them used a randomised controlled design, one used a before-after design and two were observational studies. Six studies found reductions in costs of care ranging from USD1041 to USD64,827 per patient, depending on the study period and the cost measurement. One study detected no differences in costs. Studies varied considerably regarding the Advance Care Planning intervention, patient selection and costs measured which may explain some of the variations in findings.Normative appraisal:Looking at the impact of Advance Care Planning on costs raises delicate ethical issues. Given the increasing pressure to reduce expenditures, there may be concerns that cost considerations could unduly influence the sensitive communication process, thus jeopardising patient autonomy. Safeguards are proposed to reduce these risks.Conclusion:The limited data indicate net cost savings may be realised with Advance Care Planning. Methodologically robust trials with clearly defined Advance Care Planning interventions are needed to make the costs and returns of Advance Care Planning transparent.

BackgroundWith Germany facing a shortage of doctors, hospitals have been increasingly recruiting physicians from abroad. Studies in other countries have shown that migrant physicians experience various difficulties in their work, which might impact the quality of patient care, physician job satisfaction, and, accordingly, retention. The experiences of migrant doctors in Germany have not been systematically studied so far and will likely differ from experiences migrant physicians make in other contexts. A thorough understanding of challenges faced by this group, however, is needed to develop adequate support structures—as required by the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted to give an overview of the multifaceted difficulties migrant physicians might face in German hospitals. Twenty semi-structured interviews with foreign-born and foreign-trained physicians were conducted in German. Participants were recruited via the State Chambers of Physicians and snowballing based on a maximum variation sampling strategy varying purposefully by source country and medical specialty. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using qualitative content analysis.ResultsParticipants described difficulties relating to healthcare institutions, own competencies, and interpersonal interactions. Participants experienced certain legal norms, the regulation of licensure and application for work, and the organization of the hospital environment as inadequate. Most struggled with their lack of setting-specific (language, cultural, clinical, and system) knowledge. Furthermore, behaviour of patients and co-workers was perceived as discriminating or inadequate for other reasons.ConclusionsThis is the first study to describe the broad range of issues migrant physicians experience in Germany. Based on this information, institutional actors should devise support structures to ensure quality of care, physician wellbeing, and retention. For example, training opportunities should be offered where needed to support acquisition of setting-specific knowledge. Discrimination experienced by participants calls for better diversity management as a leadership task in healthcare institutions. Misinformation practices in recruitment could be managed by a voluntary code of ethical conduct. Further research is necessary to identify strategies that adequately address diverging normative positions between migrant health personnel and their patients and colleagues.

Objectives Medical futility at the end of life is a growing challenge to medicine. The goals of the authors were to elucidate how clinicians define futility, when they perceive life-sustaining treatment (LST) to be futile, how they communicate this situation and why LST is sometimes continued despite being recognised as futile. Methods The authors reviewed ethics case consultation protocols and conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 physicians and 11 nurses from adult intensive and palliative care units at a tertiary hospital in Germany. The transcripts were subjected to qualitative content analysis.Results Futility was identified in the majority of case consultations. Interviewees associated futility with the failure to achieve goals of care that offer a benefit to the patient's quality of life and are proportionate to the risks, harms and costs. Prototypic examples mentioned are situations of irreversible dependence on LST, advanced metastatic malignancies and extensive brain injury. Participants agreed that futility should be assessed by physicians after consultation with the care team. Intensivists favoured an indirect and stepwise disclosure of the prognosis. Palliative care clinicians focused on a candid and empathetic information strategy. The reasons for continuing futile LST are primarily emotional, such as guilt, grief, fear of legal consequences and concerns about the family's reaction. Other obstacles are organisational routines, insufficient legal and palliative knowledge and treatment requests by patients or families. Conclusion Managing futility could be improved by communication training, knowledge transfer, organisational improvements and emotional and ethical support systems. The authors propose an algorithm for end-of-life decision making focusing on goals of treatment.

It is widely acknowledged that public health practice raises ethical issues that require a different approach than traditional biomedical ethics. Several frameworks for public health ethics (PHE) have been proposed; however, none of them provides a practice-oriented combination of the two necessary components: (1) a set of normative criteria based on an explicit ethical justification and (2) a structured methodological approach for applying the resulting normative criteria to concrete public health (PH) issues. Building on prior work in the field and integrating valuable elements of other approaches to PHE, we present a systematic ethical framework that shall guide professionals in planning, conducting, and evaluating PH interventions. Based on a coherentist model of ethical justification, the proposed framework contains (1) an explicit normative foundation with five substantive criteria and seven procedural conditions to guarantee a fair decision process, and (2) a six-step methodological approach for applying the criteria and conditions to the practice of PH and health policy. The framework explicitly ties together ethical analysis and empirical evidence, thus striving for evidence-based PHE. It can provide normative guidance to those who analyze the ethical implications of PH practice including academic ethicists, health policy makers, health technology assessment bodies, and PH professionals. It will enable those who implement a PH intervention and those affected by it (i.e., the target population) to critically assess whether and how the required ethical considerations have been taken into account. Thereby, the framework can contribute to assuring the quality of ethical analysis in PH. Whether the presented framework will be able to achieve its goals has to be determined by evaluating its practical application.