When serving an ethnically diverse population, it is imperative that physicians have an understanding of a patients' cultural background and attitudes towards health, nutrition and personal care.
Refusals of psychotropic medication by detained criminal defendants raise conflicting dual loyalties for psychiatrists between the duty to treat a patient and the duty to protect society from that patient.
Physicians treating adolescents need to give them the information to make intelligent and responsible decisions regarding sexual activity and reassure them of patient confidentiality.
Physicians should encourage pharmaceutical companies to make socially responsible funding decisions and take an active role in setting biomedical research priorities by advocating for fair and effective allocations of public and private biomedical R & D investments.
A Canadian physician reports there is systematic bias to the outcome of published research funded by the pharmaceutical industry and believes more steps need to be taken to improve the integrity of clinical research reports in the United States and Canada.