Ethics and Structure

In the Hastings Center Report's March-April 2022 issue, Diana Anderson, an architect and physician, and her colleagues examine ways in which aspects of the physical design of health care facilities can function as health interventions. The authors identify the kinds of ethical questions such interventions raise, and they offer recommendations for protecting patients and promoting good and fair patient outcomes. A second article focuses on how clinicians who provide patients with implantable medical devices have become dependent on health support workers who are employed by the device manufacturers themselves. The authors argue that this reliance disrupts the epistemic practices on which clinical decision-making depends and can therefore be damaging to patient care. Accompanying the regular part of this issue is a special report on the antiracism work needed in bioethics.