The physician who offers telemedicine services to out-of-state patients is subject to the laws of his or her home state and the remote patient’s state, so it is crucial to understand both.
Family planning to mitigate climate change should reflect patients’ values and preferences, which physicians should elicit during contraceptive counseling.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1157-1163. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.ecas1-1712.
AMA Journal of Ethics editor Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Richard Pan, MD, MPH, about how, as a physician and legislator, he seeks to protect public health in light of recurrent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.
Equating conscience with clinical judgment challenges the way that ethics is marginalized in medical education. Ethics is simply an account of what good medical practice looks like in particular situations.
Margaret Little, PhD and Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MA, MD
Society is best served by an approach to conscience that combines a progressive understanding of patients’ needs, a nuanced determination of when those needs translate into claims, and a limited role for conscientious refusal.
A digital record of place history and environmental context can provide a piece of clinically relevant information to help physicians understand what toxins patients may have been exposed to.