Having implied that a particular clinical decision had been made to “free up a hospital bed,” the attending physician walked away without further comments to the residents or talking with the patient.
This commentary examines the consequences of a medical student’s dishonesty during clinical rounds when she lacked the lab results the attending physician asked her for.
Research is often conducted without the knowledge or consent of those whose tissues are banked and poses possible harms to social groups if information about a few members is unscientifically applied to all.
Clinical equipoise—the idea that the community of medical experts is uncertain about the relative therapeutic merits of the arms of a clinical trial at its outset—mitigates physicians’ responsibility for patients’ poor outcomes when patients are assigned to the control arm or are harmed by an investigational agent.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(12):1108-1115. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.12.ecas1-1512.