AMA Journal of Ethics

Prognostic uncertainty about risk creates demand for ongoing communication and facilitated reflection about goals and values.

Selected ideas in C. Donald Combs and P. Ford Combs’ article, “Emerging Roles of Virtual Patients in the Age of AI,” are further considered.

Clarifying both patients’ and professionals’ values fosters good clinical decision making, particularly in situations of uncertainty.

Regulations’ negative influence on patient-physician relationships can be mitigated by innovation in decision science.

Testing everyone for everything identifies more fetal conditions, but confusion persists about whether clinicians should leave screening decisions to patients.

Word Choices is a mixed-media digital illustration that explores the importance of clinicians’ word choices during their encounters with patients. Clinicians often face ethical questions about sharing information with vulnerable patients.

The authors further consider the merits of preventing ECMO from becoming a default treatment.

Despite disciplinary diversity in bioethics, decision science is still needed to motivate the quality of clinical and research ethics.

“Living” drugs target specific B-cell malignancy tumor antigens, but cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Value analysis can help determine whether to offer these customized drugs.

How information is provided can change a choice. Decision science helps reveal affective forecasting errors and can generate choices congruent with patients’ and families’ values.