Abstract
Protection or peril? Using hidden cameras and other ‘remote’ technologies in social care.
We propose a panel discussion to explore ethical issues surrounding the adoption of technologies – such as fall detectors and hidden cameras – aimed at preventing harm to people in residential and home care.
Recent debates about the rights and wrongs of using hidden cameras to prevent abuse in residential care settings have drawn attention to the challenges of providing personal care to vulnerable people in private places. There are different approaches to thinking about the ethics of remote technologies, and we intend to explore how far these different approaches take us. A standard principles-driven analysis might weigh client privacy against concerns for their welfare, a socio-ethical analysis might focus on our understanding of behaviour in closed institutions, and a different approach again would ask how far using technologies intrudes into, supports, or reconfigures home life.
The three panel members are Michael Dunn, Murray Anderson-Wallace and Suzanne Shale, and we aim to add a fourth panelist from a provider organisation.
Biography
Murray Anderson-Wallace is a specialist in healthcare communication and independent media producer. He has a professional background in nursing, social psychology and organisational communications research.
His current portfolio includes advisory work with several national organisations and campaign groups including the Clinical Human Factors Group and the Health Foundation. He was a member of the NHS England “Never Events” Task Force and is currently an advisor to the surgical safety group at the NHS Litigation Authority.
Murray is the Executive Producer of www.patientstories.org.uk, which makes drama-documentaries to provoke discussion about safety and quality in healthcare. He has developed particular expertise working with the testimony of patients and professionals who have been affected by preventable harm, and has a specific interest in the moral and ethical dimensions of practice in this domain.
Murray is a member of the Medical Journalists Association and has published a number of articles and book chapters associated with social and cultural change within complex human systems, including healthcare.
He is Faculty Lead at the Leeds Institute for Quality Healthcare based at the Centre for Innovation in Health Management at the University of Leeds.
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