Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(8):E651-657. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.651.
There are at least two considerations here: the patient’s perception of a physician’s empathic expression and the physician’s level of comfort with expressing empathy and attending to patients’ emotions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(2):111-115. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2015.17.2.ecas1-1502.
Jack M. Berger, MS, MD, PhD and Nalini Vadivelu, MD
Guidelines for the use of controlled substances for the treatment of pain now consider inappropriate treatment, including undertreatment of pain, a departure from an acceptable standard of practice.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
PRIME-LC is a 5-year, dual-degree program at the University of California, Irvine Medical School that educates physician activists to serve in poor Latino communities.
Argument that physicians called upon for expert testimony in court have an ethical duty to educate the jury by offering opinions based upon published, clinically based evidence and peer-reviewed medical literature.