Marissa Chaet Brykman, JD, Virginia Streusand Goldman, PhD, Nandakumara Sarma, PhD, RPh, Hellen A. Oketch-Rabah, PhD, MSc, Deborah Biswas, JD, and Gabriel I. Giancaspro, PhD
Increase in dietary supplement use in the United States suggests a great need for clinicians to be aware of the range of their quality parameters.
AMA J Ethics. 2022;24(5):E382-389. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.382.
Dr Stephen P. Richmond joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Vanessa Grubbs: “How Abolition of Race-Based Medicine Is Necessary to American Health Justice.”
Marissa Chaet Brykman joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Virginia Streusand Goldman, Dr Nandakumara Sarma, Dr Hellen A. Oketch-Rabah, Deborah Biswas and Dr Gabriel I. Giancaspro: “What Should Clinicians Know About Dietary Supplement Quality?”
Laurel J. Lyckholm, MD and Arwa K. Aburizik, MD, MS
Decision-making capacity can be preserved in patients with mental illness and should be formally assessed in the context of their values and past decisions.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):444-453. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.ecas4-1705.
Informed assent, in which the family or surrogate decision makers for a patient are invited to defer to clinicians' judgment rather than specifically consenting to withholding or withdrawing futile treatments, is consistent with quality care and may protect surrogates from feeling responsible for the patient’s death.
Even seasoned doctors can have trouble confronting the topic of death. For medical students, training and role modeling are needed to make them valuable to patients facing death.
Situations in which the patient’s family seems not to be acting in good faith or the patient's suffering is uncontrollable are relatively rare and do not warrant giving physicians unilateral power to withhold or withdraw treatment in all cases of perceived medical futility.