The risks of misinformation being spread through online patient forums can be mitigated by communication strategies aimed at physicians and organizations.

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

Since 1995, the American Academy of Neurology has provided guidelines for brain death determination, but nationwide adherence to these guidelines has been incomplete.

Lobbying, maintaining diagnostic skill, participating in national societies, and contributing to robust discourse can influence practice and policy.

Criteria in statutes and tests used to diagnose brain death don’t always jibe, and this can undermine public trust in death pronouncements.

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.

Clinicians with obligations to patients and to organizations often assess patients in law enforcement for both therapeutic and nontherapeutic purposes.

Tactical emergency medical personnel direct triage and resource allocation and administer immediate interventions.

A public health approach to violence is required to help 21st-century policing evolve.

Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive device mass casualty incidents mean patients require prehospital and hospital care.