Addicts quickly learn the diagnoses that cannot be definitively confirmed or ruled out by examinations or test results but that elicit prescriptions for opioid pain management.
Many patients in settings where residents operate can only afford to seek care in a public hospital. The hospital, faculty, and resident surgeon must find ways to minimize the risk to those patients.
Clinical equipoise—the idea that the community of medical experts is uncertain about the relative therapeutic merits of the arms of a clinical trial at its outset—mitigates physicians’ responsibility for patients’ poor outcomes when patients are assigned to the control arm or are harmed by an investigational agent.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(12):1108-1115. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.12.ecas1-1512.