No matter where your medical career takes you, you will most likely encounter patients facing barriers to accessing health care. Everyone needs to prepare to care for underserved patients.
Erwin C. Wang, MHA, Megan Prior, Jenny M. Van Kirk, Stephen A. Sarmiento, Margaret M. Burke, MS, Christine Oh, MS, Eileen S. Moore, MD, and Stephen Ray Mitchell, MD
Policies and systems are slow to resolve structural disparities in access to insurance coverage and health care, but physicians can act now.
Shannon U. Waterman, MD, Amanda Kost, MD, Rachel Lazzar, MSW, and Sharon Dobie, MD, MCP
The Underserved Pathway at the University of Washington School of Medicine helps prepare future physicians to work with underserved populations by providing a foundation of practical knowledge and real-world experiences.
Physicians have an ethical responsibility to be functionally literate in health statistics and able to explain information such as a test’s positive predictive value to their patients.
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.
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, David Munson, MD, and Wynne Morrison, MD
The way that we choose how to frame the conversation with parents about halting or continuing such therapy for their children who will not recover has special importance in medicine and in society.
Medical students and residents should be taught clear principles to help them educate families about their children's nutritional requirements from the age of birth in order to prevent childhood obesity.
A physician defends her position that children should only participate in clinical trials when they have child assent and the parents also have been educated about the purpose of the research when there is no direct benefit to the child.