A large proportion of hospital inpatients are affected by cognitive impairment, posing challenges in the provision of their care in busy, fast-paced acute wards. Signs and symbols, known as visual identifiers, are employed in many U.K. hospitals with the intention of helping healthcare professionals identify and respond to the needs of these patients. Although widely considered useful, these tools are used inconsistently, have not been subject to full evaluation, and attract criticism for acting as a shorthand for a routinized response. In order for visual identifiers to be used effectively in acute care settings, thorough consideration must be given to the ethical and legal issues that are engaged in this context, and their potential benefits and harms must be weighed and balanced. This paper proposes a set of legal and ethical principles that can be used to guide the implementation of visual identifiers. Together, these principles provide a framework applicable in the design and implementation phases to systematically identify relevant considerations arising from the use of these tools. We outline some tensions that arise between principles and conclude that selecting a preferred moral framework could help to guide decision-making, as does clarity around the purpose and objectives of the identifier.

很大一部分住院患者受到认知障碍的影响，这给在繁忙、快节奏的急症病房提供护理带来了挑战。许多英国医院都采用标志和符号，称为视觉标识符，旨在帮助医疗保健专业人员识别和响应这些患者的需求。尽管这些工具被广泛认为有用，但它们的使用不一致，没有经过全面评估，并因作为常规应对措施的速记而受到批评。为了在急症护理环境中有效使用视觉识别器，必须彻底考虑在此背景下涉及的道德和法律问题，并且必须权衡和平衡其潜在的好处和危害。本文提出了一套可用于指导视觉标识符实施的法律和道德原则。这些原则共同提供了一个适用于设计和实施阶段的框架，以系统地识别使用这些工具时产生的相关考虑因素。我们概述了原则之间出现的一些紧张关系，并得出结论，选择首选的道德框架可以帮助指导决策，明确标识符的目的和目标也可以帮助指导决策。