An effective policy regarding retail clinics in a primary care practice should address patients' need for timely and convenient acute care and build capacity for enhanced access to acute care within the primary care clinic itself.

Guidelines for the use of controlled substances for the treatment of pain now consider inappropriate treatment, including undertreatment of pain, a departure from an acceptable standard of practice.

When surgical intervention is most appropriate, success should be defined by how well a surgical intervention aligns with a patient’s goals.

For some patients whose survival is extended by disease-modifying interventions, little guidance about clinical and ethical complexities exist.

Word usage and intentional clarity will influence how patients feel about that Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy surgery.

No single person should make decisions about for whom or according to which criteria palliative surgery is clinically and ethically appropriate.

Differentiating between best palliative care options and the curative and palliative potential of surgery is key to developing dual intentional clarity.

Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.

This commentary on a case considers the course of a palliative approach to care of a patient with a serious and persistent mental illness.

Uncertainty about which psychiatric interventions are palliative stems from psychiatry’s prioritization of symptom management regardless of diagnosis.