Dr. Jones has a duty to determine how the test results were lost and why, disclose this information to his patient, Mrs. Taylor, and see that she is not held responsible for the costs of rerunning the test.
We must not pit immigration policy and health care needs against one another. We need better policy on immigration, and that policy should confront immigration at the workplace and at the border—not in the hospital emergency room.
Patient safety is a medical ethics issue that must be addressed through health care teams’ open communication as well as through time-outs and checklists.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(9):925-932. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.9.stas1-1609.
Dr Catherine V. Caldicott joins Ethics Talk to discuss why turfing, despite being such a common, troublesome ethical issue, receives such little attention in the literature, how clinicians can ensure appropriate and safe transfers of care, and what health professions students and trainees can do to confront turfing when they see it.