Dr Carmen Black joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Andrea Shamaskin-Garroway, Dr E. Mimi Arquilla, Elizabeth Roessler, and Dr Kirsten M. Wilkins: “Undoing Institutional and Racial Trauma Through Interprofessional, Trauma-Informed Education.”
Dr Eric Plemons joins Ethics Talk to discuss facial feminization surgery and how clinicians can best support patient decisions about gender-affirming care.
Clinicians can support shared decision making by assessing patients’ knowledge, eligibility for screening, and preferences for engagement—active, collaborative, or passive—in the decision making process.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(7):601-607. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.7.ecas1-1507.
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.
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 coming-of-age memoir about one man's journey into womanhood underscores the important role that physicians can play to recognize transgenderism in adolescents and coordinate the care for gender reassignment.
The physician must help patients understand that all options—further testing, surgery, no action—carry risks and benefits. Disclosing the statistical probability of injury and other possible outcomes might help, but it can also hinder the process.