Physicians should recognize the influence that small gift-giving has on prescribing patterns and consequently interactions between pharmaceutical representatives and medical students and residents should be limited.
The 2004 John Conley Ethics Essay Contest Winner believes medical students must balance their desire to gain experience with clarifying their status as students to patients when there is a potential for harm.
Health care team members should be informed about the appropriate precautions to take against infection when working with STD patients and address any concerns to provide better patient care.
Is this a conflict over a team member’s practice style or is it a breach professional boundaries? Is it appropriate for team members to make this judgment, or should it instead come from the team leader?
There are at least two considerations here: the patient’s perception of a physician’s empathic expression and the physician’s level of comfort with expressing empathy and attending to patients’ emotions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(2):111-115. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2015.17.2.ecas1-1502.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.