Murray Kopelow, chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, discusses his organization's the new draft standards for commercial support of continuing medical education.
The ethical questions surrounding the recruitment of patients for clinical trials become more complicated when the recruiting physicians receive financial benefits for each patient enrolled.
Two physicians assert that pharmaceutical companies' sponsorship of clinical conferences for residents and physicians represent a conflict of interest.
An ethical case explores whether a medical student doing a radiology rotation has a duty to inform a patient whose chest x-ray shows bony metastases that was not caught by the original radiologist or mentioned in the ED chart.
The trend toward casual address and dress in the medical profession could reinforce the power differential that already exists between patient and physician and adversely affect the patient-physician relationship.
The morbidity and mortality conference serves an important educational role for physicians and underscores the importance of error disclosure in improving patient safety.