Clinical and psychosocial considerations influence how oncologists approach discussing sperm banking with adolescent patients who are about to undergo chemotherapy and with the parents of those patients.
A clinical case shows how medical commercialism poses risks to patients without symptoms who get full body scans. Screening for pre-morbid disease detection is valuable if implemented correctly but calls for physician caution.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
A philosophical analysis of how physician actions and treatment goals are defined and interpreted and how understanding this process can affect the success of the clinical encounter.