For many physicians, lack of understanding about brain death leads to confusion and muddles interactions with patients’ loved ones at the end of life.

Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.

Invisibility of racial inequity and gender inclusion in clinical research means key features of disease etiology and symptom presentation are unaccounted for.

Fostering transgender patients’ sense of agency should be a clinical and ethical priority.

Training should be implemented to respond to clinical staff members’ concerns about trans patients occupying sex-segregated spaces and to help mitigate anti-trans bias.

Professional society guidelines can be used to set standards for clinical practice instead of government. This approach could help if federal or state policymakers view discarding embryos as ethically equivalent to abortion.

Success depends on strong support, rehabilitation, adherence, and social integration.

This article considers one student’s experience after coming out as nonbinary and voicing that their pronouns are they/them.

One recent essay suggests that emphasis on social justice in medical education is done at the expense of clinicians’ technical competency. This is a response to that stance.

Kelly Leonard, executive director of insights and applied improvisation at Second City Works, relates how improvisation can help clinicians build relationships with patients and improve their outcomes.