Situations in which the patient’s family seems not to be acting in good faith or the patient's suffering is uncontrollable are relatively rare and do not warrant giving physicians unilateral power to withhold or withdraw treatment in all cases of perceived medical futility.
When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
Rachel O. Reid, MD, MS and Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH
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.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
Jalayne J. Arias, JD, MA and Kathryn L. Weise, MD, MA
Even when external factors such as nonaccidental injury weigh heavily on clinicians' perceptions, they should not lose focus on the patient's best interest when deciding whether to continue or withdraw treatment.
Monica Peek, MD, MPH, MSc, Bernard Lo, MD, and Alicia Fernandez, MD
Gender-concordant care requests involve principles of beneficence, respect, and fairness and, when they occur on rotations, require a team-based approach.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(4):332-339. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.4.ecas2-1704.
Forcing parents to participate in treatment is unlikely to succeed. Seeking to optimize the therapeutic alliance between family and pediatrician is more likely to achieve the desired outcome—the child’s short- and long-term well-being.