Physicians are obligated in many jurisdictions to perform life-sustaining treatments on premature infants with serious developmental or physical impairments, even if it goes against the parents' wishes.
David Collier, MD, PhD, Ronald M. Perkin, MD, MA, and Joseph R. Zanga, MD
The legal definitions of child neglect and child abuse are not as clear cut when faced with the issue of whether parents should be held responsible for failing to follow weight-loss plans for a morbidly obese child.
A case that describes how treatment decisions for a seriously ill baby should consider the advice and recommendations of the medical team as well as the parental preferences for the child's care.
An ethical case explores whether a medical student doing a radiology rotation has a duty to inform a patient whose chest x-ray shows bony metastases that was not caught by the original radiologist or mentioned in the ED chart.
In part II of a pre-med student's experiences with his aging grandfather, the student struggles with his strong-willed grandfather's unwillingness to comply with doctors' orders.
An ethical case describes the use of a pharmacy's database to market directly to their patients without either patient consent or disclosure of the marketing intent of the materials they received.
Physicians need to carefully explain the difficult medical realities of carrying a fetus with severe congenital abnormalities to term but then follow the wishes of a religious family who ask for reasonable medical care.