Introduction of an intervention that reduces the perceived risk of a given behavior may cause a person to increase risky behavior—this is called “risk compensation.”
Alice J. Liu joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Drs David S. Im and Laura D. Hirshbein: “What Does the History of Inpatient Psychiatric Unit Design Tell Us About Balancing Safety and Healing for Patients With Suicidal Behaviors?”
The eradication of hazing has not diminished the socialization, camaraderie, or commitment of new recruits. The physical, emotional, and mental demands of basic training suffice to produce the outcomes previously ascribed to hazing.
Medical school faculty have a nonnegotiable duty to report students whose professional behavior falls seriously short of the mark. If they refrain from fulfilling this duty for fear of retaliation, the antiharassment pendulum has truly swung too far.
Forced sterilization of HIV-positive women, which is widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Chile, violates women’s human right to autonomy and the principle of informed consent and is medically unnecessary.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):952-957. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.pfor2-1510.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Nikhil A. Patel, MS, a fourth-year medical student at the Mayo Medical School, interviewed Joia Mukherjee, MD, MPH, about Partners In Health’s mission to strengthen low-income countries’ health care systems and lessons learned from the Ebola crisis.