Clinicians and police are positioned to help persons experiencing homelessness, but little has been said about how their best impulses to serve could most productively overlap.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(11):E881-886. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.881.
An explanation of the difficulties created by language barriers in the medical encounter between patients and health care professionals. Interpreters, while necessary, may also affect the patient physician relationship.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.