Shelley Wall, MBChB, Nikki Allorto, MBChB, Ross Weale, MBBS, Victor Kong, PhD, and Damian Clarke, PhD
Caring for severe burn injuries in low- and middle-income countries requires making decisions about resource allocation given particular contextual factors.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(6):575-580. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.6.msoc1-1806.
Should a family’s ability to afford follow-up care for a child who needs “miracle surgery” play a role in the physician’s decision to operate? Would the answer change depending on the patient’s immigration status?
There are “push” factors such as poor working conditions, substandard facilities, unsafe conditions, and low income that discourage health professionals trained in Indian medical schools from staying in country.
The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
A major contributor to the lack of medicines in developing countries is an intellectual property regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit.
Physicians new to a case might object to an established care plan. Practice variation, clinical momentum, and how value is assigned by different parties to acute care and comfort measures can each contribute to conflict in these cases.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E699-707. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.699.
Dr Christy Cauley joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Zara Cooper: "Which Priorities Should Guide Palliative Surgical Research?"