One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.
In the iconic painting Broken Column, Kahlo represents her spine as a Greek column that is fractured and disintegrating. In this beautiful and tragic interpretation, the fractured column bespeaks Kahlo’s physical weakness and emotional instability.
False clinical and ethical dilemmas may be created when physicians ignore patient characteristics and contexts that are integral to shared decision making.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(2):141-146. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.2.ecas1-1702.
Tracy Shamas, MSN, APRN and Sarah Gillespie-Heyman, MSN, APRN
Veterans at the end of life have special needs due to posttraumatic stress disorder, environmental exposures, and the influence of military culture on their values. Those who die outside the Veterans Affairs health care system, however, can be at increased risk for receiving outpatient palliative care that is not sensitive to these factors.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E787-792. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.787.
Dr Catherine V. Caldicott joins Ethics Talk to discuss why turfing, despite being such a common, troublesome ethical issue, receives such little attention in the literature, how clinicians can ensure appropriate and safe transfers of care, and what health professions students and trainees can do to confront turfing when they see it.