When a medical student needs to be hospitalized, the paramount concern of the student affairs dean is promoting the student's health, followed by protecting her privacy and supporting her medical education.
Ensuring the ethical acceptability of telemedicine requires avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions and protecting the patient-physician relationship, patient privacy, and patient-centered care.
For patients to adopt personal health records, they must be convinced of the value the technology has for them. Framing that value in a way that actively engages patients as collaborators in their health care management will not only empower the individual but improve patient-clinician relationships overall.
This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Arguments that mistrust about information security will deter patients from embracing telehealth care ignore patients' willingness to take on risk in the pursuit of health benefits and the role physicians will play in encouraging adoption.
Health information technology, like prior technological advances in medicine, can improve patient care and enhance the patient-physician relationship if used properly and thoughtfully.
Determining the severity of a breach of medical privacy, and therefore whether or not it will be reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services, by the patient's reaction puts the hospital's interest in avoiding reporting breaches above the patient's best interests.
Each time-saving, patient-safety-guarding feature in digital health care technology brings with it opportunities to offer unnecessary care, reap unnecessary payment, and add to the country's overall cost of health care.
Particularly in a small community, patients may want to avoid the social stigma of seeking mental health care by receiving it from their primary care physician—who may know them well enough to have some insights an unfamiliar specialist would not.