Despite the increasing availability of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing, it is currently unclear how such services are regulated in Europe, due to the lack of EU or national legislation specifically addressing this issue. In this article, we provide an overview of laws that could potentially impact the regulation of DTC genetic testing in 26 European countries, namely Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Emphasis is placed on provisions relating to medical supervision, genetic counselling and informed consent. Our results indicate that currently there is a wide spectrum of laws regarding genetic testing in Europe. There are countries (e.g. France and Germany) which essentially ban DTC genetic testing, while in others (e.g. Luxembourg and Poland) DTC genetic testing may only be restricted by general laws, usually regarding health care services and patients’ rights.

Background: Ethical and legal issues are increasingly being reported by health caregivers; however, little is known about the nature of these issues in geriatric care. These issues can improve work and care conditions in healthcare, and consequently, the health and welfare of older people. Aim: This literature review aims to identify research focusing on ethical and legal issues in geriatric care, in order to give nurses and other health care workers an overview of existing grievances and possible solutions to take care of old patients in a both ethical and legally correct way. Methods: Using a systematic approach based on Aveyard, a search of the PubMed, CINAHL, and Ethicshare databases was conducted to find out the articles published on ethical and legal issues in geriatric care. Ethical considerations: The approval for the study was obtained from UMIT-The Health and Life Sciences University, Austria. Results: Only 50 articles were included for systematic analysis reporting ethical and legal issues in the geriatric care. The results presented in this article showed that the main ethical issues were related to the older people’s autonomy, respect for their needs, wishes and values, and respect for their decision-making. The main legal issues were related to patients’ rights, advance directives, elderly rights, treatment nutrition dilemma, and autonomy. Conclusion: Further education for professional caregivers, elderly people, and their families is needed on following topics: care planning, directive and living wills, and caregiver-family member relationships to guide and support the elderly people within their decision-making processes and during the end-of-life care.

Aim Data-protection regulations in German hospitals, based on data-protection laws and internal regulations, must be complied with and taken into account in daily work. However, these regulations are not always respected, as evidenced by the data-protection scandals in Germany of recent years. Subjects and methods In a 2010 survey, data was collected from 557 individuals including administrative staff, nursing staff, physicians, physicians with scientific/research-based work and other health professionals of 26 hospitals in Germany to analyze the factors of relevance with regard to data-protection compliance. Results The acceptance of hospital staff concerning dataprotection regulations is significantly influenced by subjective values and personal attitudes. Significant differences related to the acceptance of data-protection rules and regulations can be found in gender or type of hospital. The results show that employees consider rules and regulations to be necessary and important. However damage caused by data security breaches and the likelihood that they will occur, are considered to be less significant. A large impact on individual data-protection compliance can be reported in the subjective norm, which is influenced by the effect of close colleagues and superiors. ConclusionThe underlying results of the study at hand demonstrate practical implications which can lead to a high degree of data-protection compliance in the future. The related aspects deserving future investigation of the possible explanations for differences in behavior related to data protection among various occupational groups in hospitals are discussed. Men and women exhibit very different levels of dataprotection acceptance, so future efforts to increase sensitivity and awareness of data-protection issues in employees require gender-specific approaches. Another issue that merits investigation is the source of the influence of hospital type on dataprotection compliance.

We analyze the pricing of pain and suffering and, in particular, whether the corresponding compensation for pain and suffering is affected by a court's approach to valuing such damages. For this purpose, we use data on pain and suffering verdicts in Austria, where courts are generally free to choose between a per‐diem and a lump‐sum scheme to assess damages for pain and suffering. The per‐diem approach was introduced in 1990 but was not adopted in all Austrian provincial courts. This enables us to estimate the causal impact of the change in calculation schemes. Applying a difference‐in‐difference framework to estimate this treatment effect, we observe that courts increased their compensation by about 38 percent to 59 percent after the implementation of the per‐diem scheme.

Older people over the world have been confronted with challenges such as poverty, discrimination, and abuse, hindering their human rights and their place in society. However, the world has not tackled this challenge with urgency. While concerns associated with older people are not a new phenomenon, they have been perceived as challenges that warrant solutions that are operational, reactive, and piecemeal. This is particularly true in the case of Albania. Although older people have been historically ignored by human rights law, their rights and legal aspects are now emerging as an integral part of public policies. Within this frame, our review explores the legal aspects of older people in Albania. From the findings, it has been revealed that although there are laws ensuring legal aspects of elderly people in Albania, they have not been effectively implemented. There is a huge need to effectively implement legal support and rights for older people in Albania.