The growing number of web-savvy patients alters the power dynamic in the patient-physician relationship. In the older model of care, physicians served as unchallenged experts who alone devised therapeutic plans for patients.
Society values both the appropriate use of new technological and management innovations and the maintenance of a strong personal and therapeutic relationship between patients and physicians. The medical-home model may be able to accomplish both.
Dr Rajesh R. Tampi joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Aarti Gupta and Iqbal Ahmed: “Why Does the US Overly Rely on International Medical Graduates in Its Geriatric Psychiatric Workforce?”
Physicians working in close-knit communities, whether small towns or urban neighborhoods, have to manage relationships with people who may be simultaneously patients and neighbors, friends, and business associates.
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.
One of the major driving forces for migration by women is the availability of caregiving work in wealthier nations, so improving working conditions for migrant women and ensuring that elderly and other persons in need of care receive good care are intertwined goals.
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.