Using a Comprehensive Best Practices Approach to Strengthen Ethical Health-Related Practice

Abstract

Ethical conduct plays a vital role in ensuring that issues such as health inequities are addressed. The Interactive Domain Model (IDM), a comprehensive best practices approach, provides a guiding framework to integrate ethics into health-related practice. Its five tenets emphasize the importance of developing multiple best practices to ensure sensitivity to local circumstances; taking into account the complex and interactive nature of the world; ensuring consistency between practice and key elements such as values, theories, evidence, and understanding the environment; engaging in ongoing critical reflection; and following a continuous improvement practice cycle with active participation from priority populations. Ethical implications for each tenet and ways to meet the challenges related to acting ethically are discussed.

Health teaching-service integration: possible dialogues from collective co-management

“…6,17 In proposing to go beyond the sphere of the apprehension of reality to a critical sphere of consciousness, Freire explains that consciousness cannot exist outside praxis, that is, without action-reflection, for this dialectical unity is permanently the way of being or the possibility of transforming the world that characterizes the people, taking into account its complex and interactive nature. 6,18 With this same perspective, coproduction is one of the key concepts of the Paideia Method. It consists in the possibility of seeing the world from forces derived from internal and external values, recognizing the contradictory and unfinished character of the subject, with a view to autonomy.…”

A missing ethical competency? A review of critical reflection in health promotion

“…The search identified five articles relevant to the development, application or inclusion of critical reflection in health promotion. 6,11,16,20,21 Early search results identified a critical reflection model supported by critical theory in the critical social work literature. This search identified a further six articles relevant to the model's development, application and evaluation.…”

“…Kahan and Goodstadt emphasised the importance of engaging in critical reflection as a key component of their Interactive Domain Model of Best Practice in Health Promotion. 6,16 This model identifies a range of components across the health promotion planning cycle that characterise health promotion best practice. 16 Engaging in critical reflection across all components is required to ensure that best practice is applied.…”

“…Practising critically in health promotion is crucial for the profession to meet its ethical responsibilities. [6][7][8] A commitment to social justice, empowering and participatory processes, evidence-based practice and addressing inequities are all well-recognised values and principles underpinning critical health promotion practice. 3,11 Despite the growing recognition of critical practice in the literature, it appears both under-developed and under-practiced in health promotion.…”

“…4,5 There is increasing emphasis in the health promotion literature on the ethical imperative to move towards more critical practice in order to address health inequities and the social determinants of health. [6][7][8] Critical practice enables health promotion practitioners to focus on affecting the social structures that serve the interests of those who are the most powerful. 4,9 It provides a lens for practitioners to view and understand these structures and how they contribute to inequities.…”