Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
The U. S. health care system encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own treatment decisions and expects their doctors to cooperate in that effort. But the guidelines for exercising that responsibility remain very murky indeed.
Fibromyalgia, with no positive tests, is a “foreigner” in the medical landscape. Medicine looks for signs of pathology, changes in the structure or function of organs. The mantra of physicians facing patients with fibromyalgia: “Your tests are normal.”
You are not just the rural patient’s doctor, you are the doctor for the football team, a friend, and perhaps a relative; you speak on health at local schools and are expected to attend fundraisers.