Jessie Kimbrough-Sugick, MD, MPH, Jessica Holzer, MA, and Eric B. Bass, MD, MPH
Researchers who approach community partners with an agenda already in hand are missing the point of the community-based participatory research enterprise: developing priorities for study together.
A hospital shares responsibility for system failures that result in harm to a patient in its care. A fully functional computerized physician order-entry (CPOE) system should be able to prevent “copy and paste” medication errors from harming patients.
If society values physicians because they possess valuable clinical skills and exercise those skills with a fiduciary ethic of care toward their patients, we ought to evaluate physicians on those grounds directly, rather than looking to their behavior “after hours.”
Nontherapeutic infant male circumcision is not medically or ethically justifiable and should be deferred until the person is able to decide for himself.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(8):815-824. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.8.msoc2-1708.
Those who care for adolescents must advocate for timely disclosure of HIV diagnosis since the negative effects of late disclosure include social isolation, anxiety, loss of trust, and depression.
The guidelines for patients’ eligibility for bariatric surgery have not changed since 1991, although recent data suggest there may be indications for broadening application of the surgery.
The practice of banking sperm from adolescents about to undergo chemotherapy is not universal, which lends support to the argument that parental consent be required for the intervention.
Legal measures implemented to combat obesity in the U.S. include efforts to regulate the food supply, provide an incentive for the consumption of healthful foods, ban or restrict harmful ingredients, and alter or repurpose the built environment to encourage physical activity; such measures are least controversial when they apply specifically to children.