Jennifer Aldrich, MD, Jessica Kant, MSW, LICSW, MPH, and Eric Gramszlo
Estelle v Gamble (1976) reiterates that the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution requires adequate care to be offered to all people who are incarcerated.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E407-413. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.407.
The legal definition of a patient and the corresponding duties of the physician have been debated in state courts for over a century, and many aspects of the question are still unresolved.
Because the number of patients undergoing genetic testing is increasing, medical staff should be conscientious about their patients' potential needs for genetic counseling and be ready to advise patients on communicating their diagnoses to at-risk family members or refer them to genetic counselors.
People with mental illness or a degenerative mental disease have special protections under the law when entering into contracts or other binding documents.
Article explains the right granted to state public health agencies by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts to mandate vaccination in the presence of actual or threatened danger to the health of its residents from infectious disease.