Dr Christy Cauley joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Zara Cooper: "Which Priorities Should Guide Palliative Surgical Research?"

Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.

Authentic partnerships with people with dementia motivate full social participation and resist fatalism around experiences of illness.

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.

Priorities far beyond generating morbidity or mortality data are needed to improve patients’ experiences, innovate metrics, and advance surgical palliation as a field.

The separation of dental and medical care is a medical ethics issue because it negatively impacts vulnerable populations who lack access to dental care.