What ethical resources are available to Alcohol and Other Drug practitioners? A systematic review

Abstract

Clinical work in Alcohol and Other Drugs has not generally been an area of focus for ethicists. Likewise, ethics is not usually part of Alcohol and Other Drugs training or practice. This means that resources available to Alcohol and Other Drugs clinicians navigating ethical challenges are not widely available. This paper describes a systematic review of literature at the intersection of ethics and clinical practice in Alcohol and Other Drugs. The review will potentially benefit Alcohol and Other Drug practitioners by outlining what resources currently available and will also highlight potential directions for future research. The review searched for all published work in ethics at the intersection with Alcohol and Other Drugs. Searches within academic databases, the World Wide Web, and within journal Tables of Contents identified 18 relevant papers from 1985 onwards. An inductive process of categorisation produced two categories of this literature. The first was codes of ethics, further divided into rule-based codes (n = 4) and principle-based codes (n = 10). The second category was of empirical ethics (n = 4). Rule-based codes are not considered useful to practitioners. They can discourage reflection and potential irrelevance of rules. Principle-based codes are more useful, and principles specific to Alcohol and Other Drugs were identified in some literature. Empirical ethics enable the identification of ethics in everyday clinical work, rather than categorising ethics as a special case in particularly challenging circumstances. The four empirical ethics papers describe highly specific situations, guiding practitioners in these areas. This small body of work demonstrates that future research in empirical ethics is of potential benefit to research in ethics and to clinical practice in Alcohol and Other Drugs.

Keywords

Alcohol and Other Drugs professional ethics clinical ethics systematic review empirical ethics substance abusers care for specific groups codes of ethics

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