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.
The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
The question is whether the medi-spa is a consumer-driven, profit-motivated business that happens to fall under the purview of medical practice or a legitimate and integral part of the health care system? Does it fulfill consumers’ desires or relieve suffering and promote wellness?
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?
Physicians new to a case might object to an established care plan. Practice variation, clinical momentum, and how value is assigned by different parties to acute care and comfort measures can each contribute to conflict in these cases.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E699-707. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.699.
Tracy Shamas, MSN, APRN and Sarah Gillespie-Heyman, MSN, APRN
Veterans at the end of life have special needs due to posttraumatic stress disorder, environmental exposures, and the influence of military culture on their values. Those who die outside the Veterans Affairs health care system, however, can be at increased risk for receiving outpatient palliative care that is not sensitive to these factors.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E787-792. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.787.
Dr Christy Cauley joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Zara Cooper: "Which Priorities Should Guide Palliative Surgical Research?"
On this episode of Ethics Talk, Editorial Fellow Dr C. Alessandra Colaianni describes the creation of this month’s issue on palliative surgery, and Dr Wynne Morrison explains how to explore palliative surgical goal formation with children and their guardians.