While respecting patient autonomy and involving patients in decision making, physicians must recognize that some situations call for them to exercise selective paternalism in order to fulfill their professional duty to uphold standards of care.
Until measures of training and experience can be correlated with patient outcomes, information about a clinic's experience with egg freezing will not be useful in patient decision making.
When a patient requests an unfamiliar treatment, the physician should not hesitate to research it before giving a categorical reply about its safety or efficacy.
Courts considering teenagers' refusal of life-saving treatments often consider their maturity, the beliefs underlying the refusal, their parents' wishes, and the chances that treatment would cure them.
When a severely ill child comes into the emergency room, assent for emergency care is no more required than is parental permission. Conveying the needed care is the top priority.
Jessie Kimbrough-Sugick, MD, MPH, Jessica Holzer, MA, and Eric B. Bass, MD, MPH
Researchers who approach community partners with an agenda already in hand are missing the point of the community-based participatory research enterprise: developing priorities for study together.
Nontherapeutic infant male circumcision is not medically or ethically justifiable and should be deferred until the person is able to decide for himself.
AMA J Ethics. 2017; 19(8):815-824. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.8.msoc2-1708.
The guidelines for patients’ eligibility for bariatric surgery have not changed since 1991, although recent data suggest there may be indications for broadening application of the surgery.