Those in prison are less healthy than the general population, are far more likely to have engaged in high-risk behaviors that can result in organ damage, disease and disability, and age more rapidly than nonincarcerated individuals do.
Today’s modern trauma system is a relatively new phenomenon, and trauma surgeons are constantly responding to the changing needs of the populations they serve.
The AAP’s guidelines on lipid screening for children raise concerns about the fundamental purpose of prevention and its role in balancing individual autonomy with the benefits of society at large.
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.
People have a social obligation to conform to the general rules of sleeping: sleep at night, in a bed, in a private place away from public view, and in proper attire.
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.
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.