Cytopathologists frequently interact directly with patients at their bedsides to perform fine needle aspiration procedures. When, if ever, should cytopathologists share preliminary diagnostic impressions directly with patients?
An emerging medical ethics issue is whether to delay posting pathology reports to electronic health records (EHR) to allow clinicians time to follow up.
Requirements for informed consent are relatively vague and the exceptions are few, so it is in the physician’s best interest to inform patients about proposed treatment options, ascertain that they understand their choices, and secure their consent.
Fibromyalgia, with no positive tests, is a “foreigner” in the medical landscape. Medicine looks for signs of pathology, changes in the structure or function of organs. The mantra of physicians facing patients with fibromyalgia: “Your tests are normal.”
An aggregation of evidence over a span of decades has established as a bedrock fact of modern epidemiology that tobacco, poor diet, and lack of physical activity constitute the leading causes of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
There are few situations in which the standard of care is so clear-cut as to preclude physician judgment. Assessing the degree of need (not just the standard of care) when asking a patient to spend money requires judgment.