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.
The combination of low HIV literacy on the part of older adults and health care professionals’ assumption that they are at low risk leads to insufficiently early testing for HIV and late diagnosis.
Patients can use Internet sources to select physicians; physicians who use patient databases to select or reject patients, however, cross a professional-ethical boundary.
Bioethicist Bruce Jennings examines the changing role of physicians in end-of-life care, from paternalistic decision maker to advisor-technician and half-way back.
Two bioethicists argue that prenatal disability screening promotes negativity toward the disabled and gives parents the ability to selectively form families.
A philosophy professor argues that prenatal genetic testing allows potentially painful afflictions to be discovered prior to birth and does not unjustly discriminate against disabled people.