An interview with Allan Ramsay, one of the five appointed members of the Green Mountain Care Board, which oversees the development of Vermont’s single-payer health care system.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
Physicians have an ethical responsibility to caregivers whose psychological distress is caused by their experience of the patient’s illness and treatment.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):493-500. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.msoc3-1705.
Asymmetry in knowledge and power between (1) physicians and patients and (2) physician educators and their students creates a climate for possible abuse in both sets of relationships.