Physicians need better education in nutrition science. Referring patients to nutrition experts for dietary counseling would motivate food availability and intake assessment as routine. Good clinical counseling considers patients' cultural traditions and environmental sustainability as key ethical values.

When should ECMO be started and stopped? This month’s Ethics Talk explores ethical challenges of ECMO use in end-of-life care.

Decision aids could help clinicians know when to request ethics consultation or re-evaluate blood product usage in a specific patient care situation.

Legal inconsistencies and variation in end-of-life options generate disparities in care for unrepresented patients.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics discusses situations in which a surrogate is needed but not available to make health care decisions for a patient.

When errors happen, too often clinicians are at odds with each other about how to respond to a patient or a patient’s loved ones after that patient suffers harm.

Using alternative anesthesia techniques requires collaborative decision making that expresses a patient’s best interest.

Surgeon Dr Sara Scarlet and anesthesiologist Dr Patricia Doerr discuss their perspectives on surgeon-anesthesiologist relationships.

Corporatization in health care has complicated clinicians’ and organizations’ efforts to balance interests of individual patients against an organization’s bottom line.

Two pediatric cases highlight risks of prolonging anesthetic exposure for training purposes and prompt questions about influences of surgical training on outcomes.