Having implied that a particular clinical decision had been made to “free up a hospital bed,” the attending physician walked away without further comments to the residents or talking with the patient.
Approximately two-thirds of men aged 50 and older diagnosed REM sleep behavior disorder develop neurologic disease, for which there is no prevention or treatment at present.
The patient appears to have decision-making capacity, has head trauma, a headache despite intoxication, and is irritable—and she refuses a CT scan of the head.
Consent sounds like a laborious process that requires much time. Actually discussing a procedure or exam with a patient doesn’t take much more time than it took to read this paragraph.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.
Consideration of what constitutes sufficient information about how donation protocols can interfere with a patient’s dying process is a key feature of consent processes.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E708-716. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.708.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
Nicole Martinez-Martin, JD, PhD, Laura B. Dunn, MD, and Laura Weiss Roberts, MD, MA
Calibrating a machine learning model with data from a local setting is key to predicting psychosis outcomes. Clinicians also need to understand an algorithm’s limitations and disclose clinically and ethically relevant information to patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(9):E804-811. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.804.
Pathologists should work cooperatively with clinicians and provide guidance about appropriate testing to uphold the medical ethics principle of justice.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(8):793-799. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.ecas5-1608.