Dr Isa Ryan joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Ashish Premkumar and Professor Katie Watson: “Why the Post-Roe Era Requires Protecting Conscientious Provision as We Protect Conscientious Refusal in Health Care.”
Dr Rebecca Cohen and Professor Katie Watson join Ethics Talk to consider observed decompensation as a post-Dobbs clinical and ethical phenomenon and its influences on health professionalism.
Educators discussing ethically challenging topics with students should try to cultivate open mindedness while illuminating potential negative consequences that their health practice beliefs—such as refusing to provide abortion care—can have for patients, particularly those with limited options.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(7):E637-642. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.637.
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.