Physicians have a professional obligation and, in many states, a legal duty to report drivers whose functional or cognitive impairments may pose a safety hazard.
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.
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.
Physicians have a responsibility to balance patient confidentiality and full disclosure to the family of adolescent patients with eating disorders in order to provide optimal treatment.
Physicians should not perform involuntary drug testing on an adolescent with decisional capacity without strong medical or legal reasons, even if the parents request the test.
Physicians need to take the necessary steps to ensure continuity of care when a patient with cystic fibrosis is transferred from the pediatric unit to adult care.
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, David Munson, MD, and Wynne Morrison, MD
The way that we choose how to frame the conversation with parents about halting or continuing such therapy for their children who will not recover has special importance in medicine and in society.