False clinical and ethical dilemmas may be created when physicians ignore patient characteristics and contexts that are integral to shared decision making.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(2):141-146. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.2.ecas1-1702.
When a child or family begins to stand out because of patterns in history or physical findings, physicians must determine whether to take a closer look at the situation.
A major contributor to the lack of medicines in developing countries is an intellectual property regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit.
Is our generation of physicians somehow “weaker” because we’d rather not spend our entire lives at the office? Physicians who trained and practiced under more grueling conditions wonder how we expect to be competent physicians if we don’t work at it?
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
Patient safety is a medical ethics issue that must be addressed through health care teams’ open communication as well as through time-outs and checklists.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(9):925-932. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.9.stas1-1609.