Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
Dr Jonathan Treem joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Joel Yager and Jennifer L. Gaudiani: “A Life-Affirming Palliative Care Model for Severe and Enduring Anorexia Nervosa.”
Caregiver trustworthiness and a competent patient’s prerogative to return to suboptimal living conditions are critical considerations in discharge planning.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):506-510. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.ecas2-1506.
The U. S. health care system encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own treatment decisions and expects their doctors to cooperate in that effort. But the guidelines for exercising that responsibility remain very murky indeed.
Fabian M. Saleh, MD and H. Martin Malin, PhD, MA, LMFT
In treating patients whose sexual fantasies do not trigger an immediate legal duty to report, psychiatrists must be vigilant for signs that the patient intends to act on a fantasy.
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
The legal definition of a patient and the corresponding duties of the physician have been debated in state courts for over a century, and many aspects of the question are still unresolved.
With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to decide on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it is instructive to understand the relevant policy positions of the largest physician organization in the country.