In clinical settings, chaplains are key communicators who help mediate between patients, families, and the medical team. This month on Ethics Talk, we explore how chaplains help patients and families articulate their goals and navigate logistical and emotional challenges that arise in the hospital.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
The opioid crisis, maternal death, and COVID-19 underscore trust as foundational to public health and call for redefinition of what it means to be a US clinician.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(3):E265-270. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.265.
Rayner Kay Jin Tan, Jane Mingjie Lim, MSW, and Jeremiah Kah Wai Chan, MSc
Merits and drawbacks of U = U messaging are ethically and clinically complex, and drawbacks could harm patients in whom viral suppression is hard to achieve.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(5):E418-422. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.418.