The participatory decision-making model for patient-physician relationships is the best approach for addressing the individual family-related and social influences that stress that relationship.
Pairing medical students with chronically ill community volunteers for 2 years helps those students gain appreciation for the experience of illness, develop self-reflection and perspective-taking, and learn to communicate with people who may be quite unlike them.
Physicians have a responsibility to assess elderly patients for conditions that could affect their ability to drive safely and to be familiar with state laws that govern physician duty to report impaired drivers.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.
Physicians have a professional obligation and, in many states, a legal duty to report drivers whose functional or cognitive impairments may pose a safety hazard.
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, David Munson, MD, and Wynne Morrison, MD
The way that we choose how to frame the conversation with parents about halting or continuing such therapy for their children who will not recover has special importance in medicine and in society.
Direct sterilization by means of tubal ligation is morally unacceptable in Catholic bioethics but other procedures that result in indirect sterilization may be acceptable under certain conditions.
State laws often require physicians to report suspected abuse and assault, creating a dilemma for physicians who must not only treat the injured patient but act as an informant to police.