Dr Matthew C. Bobel joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Robert K. Cleary: “How Should Risk Be Communicated to Patients When Developing Resident Surgeon Robotic Skills?”
When called to consult or to testify at “sexually violent predator” hearings, medical professionals’ primary task is adapting recognized medical terminology to the SVP label; they are asked to shoehorn medical diagnoses into ill-fitting legal language.
The physician must consider the potential benefits of the new procedure and then determine, through discussion with the patient, what value the patient places on those specific benefits.
We must try to understand why there is such certainty about poor prognosis in severe brain-injury cases, when in fact many patients recover, albeit to a level of function most of us would not desire.
Allan B. Peetz, MD, Nicholas Sadovnikoff, MD, and Michael F. O’Connor, MD
Because of their serious medical conditions and the nature of the treatments, patients who are candidates for extracorporeal life support may not be able to give properly informed consent for the treatment.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):236-242. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.stas1-1503
Concerns about the deleterious effects of stress on the mind and body have led to the beginnings of a stress vaccine, an injection that will reduce these effects.
The purpose of assessing dangerousness is to determine whether an individual poses a risk of endangering self or others now or in the near future and to identify what interventions are necessary to minimize that risk.
Using evidence-based medical guidelines in courts will require confronting legal professionals' lack of training in assessing scientific evidence, the limitations of available evidence, and fundamental distinctions between the meaning of evidence in medicine and law.
The duty of forensic psychiatrists is to serve as objective experts to courts, but special circumstances in juvenile forensic evaluations and expectations about the patient-physician relationship may encourage confusion between the roles of forensic evaluator and treating psychiatrist.