AMA Journal of Ethics

Editor in chief, Dr Audiey Kao, talks with Dr Matthew Wynia about allocation of critical care resources and clinicians' duty to show up to work during public health emergencies.

Tara Montgomery and Dr Zackary Berger discuss how to address some health care cultures’ negative influences on service delivery and quality.

Author Ryan Sallans discusses his experience accessing health care and suggests how to take good gynecological care of transmen.

Drs Christy Rentmeester and David Heymann discuss the ethical relevance of colonialism and deadly disease outbreaks.

Dr Sean C. McConnell provides an introduction to gene editing, and Scott J. Schweikart discusses what prudent governance requires.

Drs Katrina Bramstedt and Ana Iltis discuss the development of QoL assessment tools to help patient-subjects considering reconstructive transplantation.

Decision making in health care demands that we balance multiple considerations, like quality of life, statistics, and how different options could affect others. Dr Brian Zikmund-Fisher shares his own experience as a patient and explains how decision science can help us navigate ethically complex health decisions.  

Global health outreach programs can risk benefitting students from resource-rich areas of the world more than the patients in resource-poor areas of the world. This month’s episode of Ethics Talk explores an alternative to academic health center-based health outreach programs.

How do we determine what a fair price for a life-saving prescription medication should be? This month, we discuss what is means for a price to be “fair” and explore the current legal and economic landscape of prescription drug pricing in the US.

When patients are unable to express their wishes and do not have surrogates or advance directives, which and whose values should inform decision making for them? We discuss ethical complexities of caring for unrepresented patients.