Some patients who need general medical care before a dental intervention can suffer increased risk for poor outcomes if they have compromised access to care.

“Very important persons” care contributes to multitiered, racially segregated health service delivery streams that influence clinicians’ conceptions of what patients deserve from them.

Clinical needs of patients with disabilities are seen with the “medical gaze,” a depersonalized lens of evidence-based medicine and of presumed objectivity.

Extraordinary changes to the legal landscape of abortion care require reevaluating health professionals’ appropriation of conscience.

Dr Isa Ryan joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Ashish Premkumar and Professor Katie Watson: “Why the Post-Roe Era Requires Protecting Conscientious Provision as We Protect Conscientious Refusal in Health Care.”

Principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence guide trauma-informed care. Care ethics should also support this framework for responding to the health needs of trafficked patients.

State laws prohibiting sodomy were on the books throughout US history until struck down by the US Supreme Court, which argued in Lawrence v Texas (2003) that the state cannot criminalize private sexual conduct.

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.

A physician has an obligation to order necessary diagnostic tests for a patient on Medicaid with whom he or she has an established patient-physician relationship regardless of whether the cost of the necessary test will be reimbursed.

An argument that the concept of judicious dissent can resolve the debate over a physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to provide lawful services.