Kym Ahrens, MD, MPH, F. Bruder Stapleton, MD, and Maneesh Batra, MD, MPH
The University of Washington Pediatric Residency Program Experience in Global Health and Community Health and Advocacy embodies essential principles of successful short-term rotations from academic medical centers to resource-limited countries.
The traditional triple threat model of academic physician careers can help global health researchers balance research commitments and the duty to care.
Demographic information about a specific subset of patients can help physicians recognize conditions they do not expect to find in the larger population.
Primary materials including interviews with some of the volunteer subjects provide information on the experiments into the pathogenic mechanism of yellow fever.
Specific advocate guidelines are needed for the protection of children in state custody who are potential research subjects in trials that would expose them to greater-than-minimal risk but also hold the prospect of direct benefit.
Physicians should recognize that patients’ beliefs may cause them to have non-medical explanations for their illnesses and that shared explanations should be negotiated if treatment plans are to be successful.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.