Clinicians have an ethical obligation to promote health equity in their communities. This month, we discuss how clinicians worked to expose the water crisis in Flint, and explore ways that clinicians can combat systemic injustice and promote health equity.
Michael McKee, MD, MPH, Ben Case, Maureen Fausone, Philip Zazove, MD, MM, Alicia Ouellette, JD, and Michael D. Fetters, MD, MPH, MA
For reasons of medical ethics, medical schools should embrace functional technical standards that focus on the capabilities of students with disabilities.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(10):993-1002. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.10.medu1-1610.
The patient appears to have decision-making capacity, has head trauma, a headache despite intoxication, and is irritable—and she refuses a CT scan of the head.
Consent sounds like a laborious process that requires much time. Actually discussing a procedure or exam with a patient doesn’t take much more time than it took to read this paragraph.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.