Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(3):229-236. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.3.ecas4-1603.
A guardian’s request to sterilize a woman with intellectual disabilities is not ethically justifiable unless the woman assents and it is to her benefit.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(4):365-372. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.4.ecas2-1604.
Patients have the ethical and legal right to choose their physicians for whatever reasons they wish, but physicians need not let patient prejudices go unremarked upon.
Disparities in children’s mental health care could be addressed through expansion of school-based programs via passage of the Mental Health in Schools Act.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(12):1218-1224. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.pfor1-1612.
Patients can use Internet sources to select physicians; physicians who use patient databases to select or reject patients, however, cross a professional-ethical boundary.