Jessica H. Ballou, MD, MPH and Karen J. Brasel, MD, MPH
Calls to expand palliative care education have been explicit since the 1990s, but palliative care training in surgery remains too narrowly focused on end of life.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(10):E800-805. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.800.
This process of developing EBM-based guidelines and applying them to clinical care highlights the tension between generating unbiased knowledge based on statistical aggregation and the application of this information to individual patients.
To succeed in accountable care organizations, physicians will need to learn to emphasize collaboration rather than authority, keep costs in mind, and encourage patients to plan in advance for palliative care and death.