Dr Brendan D. Kelly joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Róisín Plunkett: “Should Dignity Preservation Be a Precondition for Safety and a Design Priority for Healing in Inpatient Psychiatry Spaces?”
Nubia Chong, MD, Maria Mirabela Bodic, MD, Peter Steen, MD, Ludwing Salamanca, MD, PhD, and Stephanie LeMelle, MD, MS
Paternalistic language in patients’ health records is of specific ethical concern because it emphasizes clinicians’ power and patients’ vulnerabilities and can be demeaning and traumatizing.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(3):E225-231. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.225
Dr Matthew L. Edwards joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Nathaniel P. Morris: “How Inpatient Psychiatric Units Can Be Both Safe and Therapeutic.”
Dr Peter Steen joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Nubia Chong, Maria Mirabela Bodic, Ludwing Salamanca, and Stephanie LeMelle: “What Should Students and Trainees Learn About Patient-Centered Documentation?”
Inpatient psychiatric units designed to reduce patients’ risk of harm to self or others can compromise patients’ comfort. Some environmental modifications prioritize safety by limiting patients’ access to personal items. This set of clinical phenomena is not ethically neutral and should prompt us to carefully consider when and how patients’ experiences of their care environments undermine therapeutic goals of their hospitalizations. This theme issue investigates which criteria we should use to assess and evaluate patients’ risk of harm to self or others and which values we should rely upon to guide which iatrogenic harm risks we accept as products or byproducts of clinical and organizational environmental designs.
Jennifer T. McIntosh, PhD, RN, CNE, PMH-BC, NEA-BC and Mona Shattell, PhD, RN
This commentary examines prevention policies that overly rely on liberty restrictions imposed by designs of inpatient psychiatric units’ structures and spaces.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(3):E199-204. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.199.