AMA Journal of Ethics

Adhering too strictly to biomedical thinking about diagnosis can prevent clinicians from empathically engaging with patients and helping them navigate their illness experiences.

Invisibility of racial inequity and gender inclusion in clinical research means key features of disease etiology and symptom presentation are unaccounted for.

Hyperfocus on measurability can result in evidentiary overreliance and undervaluation of patients’ experience narratives.

Pharmaceuticals make symptoms and biological drug targets more visible but can render individual and community suffering less visible.

Fostering transgender patients’ sense of agency should be a clinical and ethical priority.

Kim Christiansen discusses her experiences managing limited mobility and chronic pain from a partial spinal cord injury and Dr Natalie Hoff describes good physical therapy care for patients with chronic migraine headaches.

Patients writing daily journal briefs about work-related activities and pain can help clinicians help them.

Public and self-stigma negatively influence patients’ quality of life, employment, and housing opportunities.

Some clinicians cite absence of long-term data to justify not fully deferring surgery for children with DSD, and legal restrictions of early procedures are also at play.

While men are diagnosed with depression at half the rate of women, they die by suicide 3 to 4 times as frequently.