Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(3):229-236. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.3.ecas4-1603.
Alexander Craig, MPhil and Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH
Eliciting the patient’s motives and goals and helping the patient and her loved ones explore alternatives are essential to maintaining trusting relationships and open communication.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E690-698. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.690.
Margaret Little, PhD and Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MA, MD
Society is best served by an approach to conscience that combines a progressive understanding of patients’ needs, a nuanced determination of when those needs translate into claims, and a limited role for conscientious refusal.
Patients can use Internet sources to select physicians; physicians who use patient databases to select or reject patients, however, cross a professional-ethical boundary.
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.