Critical skills required to weigh decisions with serious consequences, manipulate information rationally, and choose wisely are skills that are likely to be impaired by frontal lobe injury that results in personality change.
Using the patient’s worldview to challenge his or her decision and establish a treatment plan—implying the view is shared by the physician when it is not—could be seen as manipulative and deceptive.
Katherine Gentry, MD, MA and Aaron Wightman, MD, MA
A patient’s refusal of tracheostomy during an anticipated difficult intubation prompts critical questions about how to best express respect for a pediatric patient’s autonomy and whether and when deviation from standard of care is clinically and ethically appropriate.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E683-689. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.683.
Emergency medical consultations share with other emergencies the need for prompt action, potentially without information or tools ordinarily available.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):479-484. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.ecas1-1605.
This commentary on a case considers the ethical feasibility of palliative psychiatry in the care of patients with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(9):E668-673. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.668.