Jessica H. Ballou, MD, MPH and Karen J. Brasel, MD, MPH
Calls to expand palliative care education have been explicit since the 1990s, but palliative care training in surgery remains too narrowly focused on end of life.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(10):E800-805. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.800.
There are numerous state and federal laws designed to protect against misuse and diversion of prescription drugs that apply to patients' behavior, physicians' prescribing practices, and dispensing.
Today's medical students have an important role in ethical care for the dying because their role involves having conversations with patients about their experiences and values.
Though there are channels through which terminally ill patients can access some experimental drugs that have not yet received FDA approval for marketing to the public, in general those drugs must already be proven safe and effective.
Conflicts between federal and state laws governing marijuana, lack of evidence about its efficacy as a treatment, and physicians' inability to predict or control dosage would all be aided by reclassification of the drug that would let clinical research go forward.
While proponents of direct-to-consumer drug advertising tout them as vehicles for patient empowerment, critics point to their influence on unsound prescribing and the medicalization of human experience.
The UCLA curriculum model educates students about intimate partner violence by integrating the topic into existing preclinical and clinical course work and offering elective experiences for interested students.
Ana E. Nunez, MD, Candace J. Robertson, MPH, and Jill A. Foster, MD
The Drexel University College of Medicine Women’s Health Education Program is a model for training medical students to screen for and respond to intimate partner violence.