There are few situations in which the standard of care is so clear-cut as to preclude physician judgment. Assessing the degree of need (not just the standard of care) when asking a patient to spend money requires judgment.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics' theme editor, Nadi N. Kaonga, a medical student and predoctoral candidate at Tufts University in Boston, interviewed Gordon D. Schiff, MD, on reframing professional boundaries in the patient-physician relationship.
The high price of cancer drugs in the US relative to European countries with universal health care raises ethical issues of access, financial burden on patients, and unsustainability of the health care system.
The Orphan Drug Act of 1983 provides incentives to encourage the development of drugs for rare diseases, but available orphan drugs tend to be expensive and targeted to the more common of the rare diseases.
If a medical decision about high-value care involves a conflict between the principles of beneficence and justice, an explicit analysis of the individual case is necessary to ensure that the interests of both the patient and society are served.
Laura N. Gitlin, PhD and Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN
As a matter of medical ethics, physicians must address the health care needs of and be advocates for family caregivers of their patients with dementia.
Networking with a friend to help a patient gain employment is not unethical as long as confidentiality is maintained and the patient grants his or her doctor permission to discuss the situation with the friend.
A physician in a university student health center may feel a duty to intervene when he finds out from a patient that a student who is not a patient is diverting medication, but doing so would violate patient confidentiality.