Alexander Craig, MPhil and Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH
Eliciting the patient’s motives and goals and helping the patient and her loved ones explore alternatives are essential to maintaining trusting relationships and open communication.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E690-698. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.690.
An emerging medical ethics issue is whether to delay posting pathology reports to electronic health records (EHR) to allow clinicians time to follow up.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(8):826-832. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.pfor1-1608.
Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(3):229-236. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.3.ecas4-1603.
Physicians can maintain a balance between professional and personal obligations by having a well-organized practice and honest communication with patients.
Patients can use Internet sources to select physicians; physicians who use patient databases to select or reject patients, however, cross a professional-ethical boundary.
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.