Pringl Miller, MD, Preeti R. John, MD, MPH, and Sabha Ganai, MD, PhD, MPH
A surgeon’s duty is to identify goals of care, including those about quality of life, from a patient’s perspective and to consider how to achieve them.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(10):E778-782. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.778.
In treating children with autism, physicians should reframe the common dynamic in which the family wants medication that the doctor is withholding to focus instead on the family’s and physician’s share goal—the patient’s well-being.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):299-304. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.ecas1-1504.
Guidelines for proceeding with a plan of care when family members have conflicting opinions about the patient’s wishes and the patient does not speak the same language as her physicians.
Physicians should recognize that patients’ beliefs may cause them to have non-medical explanations for their illnesses and that shared explanations should be negotiated if treatment plans are to be successful.
Physicians should demonstrate compassion when the parent of an ill child asks the physician for his or her personal opinion regarding the parents' choice to continue experimental treatment when the prognosis is not good.