Diagnosing a child with borderline signs of Asperger disorder can be a gateway to needed interventions and services and also a label that stigmatizes or influences the child’s development.
As courts continue to define the balance between a First Amendment right of free speech, the public's right to know, and protection of the private, physicians must take care to protect patient privacy in any publishing endeavor.
Writing a case study of a psychiatric patient may change the patient-physician dynamic even if the patient consents to be written about. And when the patient is a minor and consent must involve her parents, the process becomes even more complicated.
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.
Physicians should prescribe the best course of treatment for their cancer patients, even if the proposed treatment falls within the experimental treatment clauses in health insurance coverage.
Diagnosis and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a childhood-onset problem of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsiveness that may persist into teen years and even beyond, affecting girls as well as boys.
A case that illustrates how Western medicine's body or mind approach to diagnosis and treatment can differ from that of many patients from non-Western cultures.