The picture that emerges from study of physician economic behavior is mixed, but from the intensity of responses by some professional societies to Medicare's coding modifier proposal, it appears that economic incentives matter a lot to many of their members.
This process of developing EBM-based guidelines and applying them to clinical care highlights the tension between generating unbiased knowledge based on statistical aggregation and the application of this information to individual patients.
The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on professionalism and the use of social media, sexual misconduct in the practice of medicine, sexual or romantic relations between physicians and key third parties, and physicians’ duty to care for the poor.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):432-434. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.coet1-1505.
AMA Journal of Ethics' editor Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Kenneth Sands, MD, about harms to patient dignity caused by unintentional disrespect and about initiatives for measuring, tracking, and correcting such harms.
Dr Amy B. Cadwallader joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Kavitha Nallathambi: “How Should Regulators and Manufacturers Prevent Avoidable Deaths of Children From Contaminated Cough Syrup?”
Health care professionals’ use of social media can pose ethical challenges related to the boundary between professional and personal identities, privacy, confidentiality, and the trustworthiness of health care professionals.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(11):1009-1018. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.peer1-1511.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics editor-in-chief Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Wendy Levinson, MD, about the efforts of the Choosing Wisely initiative to foster cultural change in medicine cross-nationally by stimulating dialogue about overuse of tests and treatments