Bed to Bench: Medicine and the Law

Introduction to the March 2016 issue on bed to bench: medicine and the law.

Medical expert witnesses are ethically and legally obligated to provide honest testimony that meets the standards of the Daubert test.

The best interests of a pregnant psychotic patient can be served by determining her decision making capacity and using surrogate decision making if needed.

Expedited partner therapy is an ethical and effective treatment for sexually transmitted infection, provided patients are reliable messengers to partners.

Expedited partner therapy is an ethical and effective treatment for sexually transmitted infection, provided patients are reliable messengers to partners.

Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?

Courses on medical malpractice litigation help medical students learn what is expected of them as expert witness and defendant through a mock deposition.

After the Indiana HIV outbreak in 2015, Congress partially repealed the ban on needle exchange programs, providing funding for operations but not syringes.

A new neuropsychological, game-based test battery to measure traits predictive of recidivism holds promise for individually tailoring criminal sentences.

To participate in physician workforce policy, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education must be protected from enforcement of antitrust law.

Law doesn’t always adequately address unauthorized uses of individuals’ DNA. Ethics can help establish legal privacy protections that work.

Certificate of need programs need to be strengthened and updated to ensure consumers’ continuing access to care after hospital consolidations and mergers.

Streamlining US health care business has raised unique privacy concerns. Bills and explanations of benefits contain protected health information that could be disclosed to someone other than the patient.

Amendments to the Common Rule and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) raise questions about broad consent and sale of health data.

Alternatives to suing could help open communication between injured patients and clinicians.

Undocumented immigrants treated with isoniazid (INH) for latent tuberculosis infection should be covered for transplant for INH-related liver failure.

AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Arina Evgenievna Chesnokova, MPH, a third-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, interviewed Megan Sandel, MD, MPH about how physicians can establish partnerships with attorneys.