Respecting patient autonomy sometimes entails adult patients' making what those in allopathic medicine view as poor decisions, but compassionate patient communication can leave the door open for patients to change their minds.
The Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine provides a scale for stratifying evidence from strongest to weakest on the basis of susceptibility to bias and the quality of study design.
Physicians should not only avoid forming personal relationships with drug reps but must also acquire and apply numeracy skills and information management strategies to critically evaluating drug reps’ information.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):729-733. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.ecas1-1508.
There are few situations in which the standard of care is so clear-cut as to preclude physician judgment. Assessing the degree of need (not just the standard of care) when asking a patient to spend money requires judgment.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
A patient’s request for a treatment does not establish that treatment as medically reasonable according to evidence-based deliberative clinical judgment.