The author argues that long-term trends point to a future for physician assistants and nurse practitioners as the principal front-line deliverers of primary care, with physicians focusing on managerial duties and specialty care.
Both bans on unhealthful foods and warning label requirements face strong legal opposition from industry and ignite furious public debate about the role and limits of government intervention in American lifestyles.
Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.
Until healthful food is widely affordable and accessible to all people, any discussions of how policy might infringe on the right to choose may be misguided.
A new Virginia law governing collaborations between nurse practitioners and doctors leaves unresolved key legal issues in team-based care, including those pertaining to medical malpractice and liability and anticompetitive practices.
Patients who use drugs intravenously may be at high risk for relapse, but their situation is no more futile than that of persons with diabetes and coronary artery disease who smoke and frequent all-you-can-eat buffets.
Karen Uhlenhuth, Angira Patel, MD, and John Lantos, MD
A statin drug will not give a 10-year-old a high level of energy, the freedom to interact with peers without fear of being bullied, or a generally happy outlook on life.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.