Michele C. Gornick, PhD, MA and Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher, PhD, MA
How information is provided can change a choice. Decision science helps reveal affective forecasting errors and can generate choices congruent with patients’ and families’ values.
Decision making in health care demands that we balance multiple considerations, like quality of life, statistics, and how different options could affect others. Dr Brian Zikmund-Fisher shares his own experience as a patient and explains how decision science can help us navigate ethically complex health decisions.
Medical students’ moral distress about end-of-life cases can be reduced through ethics consultation and ethics rounds, narrative reflection, and mentoring.
The convening power of clinical ethics committees stems from their reputation for fairness and procedural legitimacy in addressing and resolving ethically complex cases.
When patients are unable to express their wishes and do not have surrogates or advance directives, which and whose values should inform decision making for them? We discuss ethical complexities of caring for unrepresented patients.