A physician describes how patients are selected for gastric bypass surgery in his practice and the lifelong relationship he commits to with his surgical patients.
Patients for gastric bypass surgery should be carefully selected on the basis of several objective factors, and those chosen should be treated and monitored by specialized teams to optimize outcomes.
A bioethicist who had thyroid cancer as a child describes his recent positive experience as an adult patient with his surgeon and how his surgeon's bioethics training helped the patient-physician relationship.
Physicians need to understand when it may be appropriate to let patients get involved in medical decision-making and when it may be necessary to provide their personal medical judgment.
An attending physician in an urban teaching hospital faces an ethical dilemma when a mother refused to allow an African American medical student to examine her child.