As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to discuss what clinicians need to know about changes to the post-June 2022 legal, ethical, and clinical landscape of abortion care in the US.
This narrative illuminates need for students and clinicians to be well prepared to face ethically and structurally complex realities of identifying and responding to children.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(2):E159-165. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.159.
When deciding whether a pregnant woman will take antidepressants that pose a slight risk to the fetus, the patient and doctor must each make value-based determinations about whether absolute protection of the fetus is more important than preventing the mother’s probable suffering.
Amanda Fakih, MHSA and Kayte Spector-Bagdady, JD, MBE
Testing everyone for everything identifies more fetal conditions, but confusion persists about whether clinicians should leave screening decisions to patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2019;21(10):E858-864. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.858.
Physicians who have adequately informed a competent patient of his or her diagnosis, its meaning, and medically appropriate options should then accept the patient’s informed consent or refusal of treatment.