Prison patients are never alone and never without supervision and rules, and the medical staff is always negotiating its power with the adminsitration. The patient-doctor relationship can become distorted in this setting.
Those in prison are less healthy than the general population, are far more likely to have engaged in high-risk behaviors that can result in organ damage, disease and disability, and age more rapidly than nonincarcerated individuals do.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
Giving undocumented immigrants and those with DACA status (DREAMers) access to health care and medical education enables them to contribute to these systems.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(3):221-233. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.3.peer1-1703.
Oliver Schirokauer, PhD, MD, Thomas A. Tallman, DO, MMM, Leah Jeunnette, PhD, Despina Mavrakis, MBA, and Monica L. Gerrek, PhD
An educational initiative is described in which medical and bioethics students observe health care in an urban jail for two days and reflect on their learning.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(9):845-853. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.9.peer1-1709.
Jennifer T. McIntosh, PhD, RN, CNE, PMH-BC, NEA-BC and Mona Shattell, PhD, RN
This commentary examines prevention policies that overly rely on liberty restrictions imposed by designs of inpatient psychiatric units’ structures and spaces.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(3):E199-204. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.199.
Therapeutic security in inpatient psychiatric settings requires careful planning and implementation if it is to support both patients’ safety and dignity.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(3):E205-211. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.205.