Effective interprofessional collaboration and patient care require understanding team members’ roles and responsibilities and clear communication.

AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Emily Johnson, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, interviewed Susan Mizner, JD, about some merits, drawbacks, and alternatives to guardianship.

Critical skills required to weigh decisions with serious consequences, manipulate information rationally, and choose wisely are skills that are likely to be impaired by frontal lobe injury that results in personality change.

Trauma care presumes informed consent for treatment, but resident supervision is required within a training structure of graduated responsibility.

A patient’s refusal of tracheostomy during an anticipated difficult intubation prompts critical questions about how to best express respect for a pediatric patient’s autonomy and whether and when deviation from standard of care is clinically and ethically appropriate.

In some cases, hope might not have substantial ethical or therapeutic value.