AMA Journal of Ethics

Two pediatric cases highlight risks of prolonging anesthetic exposure for training purposes and prompt questions about influences of surgical training on outcomes.

Residency cross-training facilitates mutual respect and good communication during routine clinical care and during crises.

When errors happen, too often clinicians are at odds with each other about how to respond to a patient or a patient’s loved ones after that patient suffers harm.

Clinicians have duties to express regard for the breadth and depth of their influence on patients’ pre- and postsurgical self-understandings.

Using alternative anesthesia techniques requires collaborative decision making that expresses a patient’s best interest.

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS®) protocols vary by surgery type and are compared, clinically and ethically, to traditional protocols.

Surgeons and anesthesiologists each have a unique sense of duty to patients to clarify which factors might influence outcomes after intraoperative cardiac arrest.

Most depictions of OR dynamics feature 2 central figures: surgeon and patient. But surgical care is built on triadic relationships among surgeons, anesthesiologists, and patients.

This painting depicts a solitary physician after hours in an empty hospital lobby and is a tribute to such spaces in health care.

In isolation, we are physically apart; in solidarity, we are together. The COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes our social responsibility to maintain physical distance from one another. In doing so, we solidify our collective strength.