Bjorg Thorsteinsdottir, MD, Annika Beck, and Jon C. Tilburt, MD, MPH
Good clinicians understand why a patient is asking for a test or treatment, and their skillful counseling can often stem the tide of requests for marginally beneficial tests and procedures.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(11):1028-1034. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.ecas2-1511.
The adverse health effects of climate change should be the focus of physician advocacy efforts and of conversations between physicians and their patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1174-1182. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.ecas3-1712.
The patient appears to have decision-making capacity, has head trauma, a headache despite intoxication, and is irritable—and she refuses a CT scan of the head.
Consent sounds like a laborious process that requires much time. Actually discussing a procedure or exam with a patient doesn’t take much more time than it took to read this paragraph.
Consideration of what constitutes sufficient information about how donation protocols can interfere with a patient’s dying process is a key feature of consent processes.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E708-716. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.708.