When medical students are involved in patient care as part of their education and training, patients must be informed of their status and provide written or oral consent to be treated.
A first-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology is faced with legal and ethical issues when a patient who has been pregnant for 40 weeks requests induction of labor.
A new Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs policy explicitly forbids physicians-in-training from practicing life-saving interventions on newly deceased individuals without consent.
Physicians should approach potentially difficult patients in the emergency department with calm reassurances, in the presence of aides or security to assist the physician, and determine whether emergency or urgent medical care is needed.
An attending physician in an urban teaching hospital faces an ethical dilemma when a mother refused to allow an African American medical student to examine her child.
Physicians must be able to decide when to accept a patient's decision in the event that the decision seems irrational or does not seem to be in the patient's best interest.
An ethical case explores whether a physician who wants to terminate his professional relationship with a noncompliant hemodialysis patient has an obligation to treat the patient if the patient has a disability.