An overview of Maine's pilot program to reduce the practice of defensive medicine in certain specialties by assuring legal protection for doctors who follow particular guidelines and discussion of why it was not used in malpractice litigation.
AMA J Ethics. 2018; 13(11):792-795. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2011.13.11.pfor1-1111.
A medical student's perspective on the importance of empathy in patient-physician relationships and a reflection on how empathy was taught in his medical school.
Medical malpractice pits the legal system's ethics of client advocacy against the medical profession's ethics of patient advocacy. Fear of liability may lead to defensive medicine, an aberration of both professions' intent.
The military medical ethics curriculum is outlined by the director of medical ethics programs at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
A clinical case shows how medical commercialism poses risks to patients without symptoms who get full body scans. Screening for pre-morbid disease detection is valuable if implemented correctly but calls for physician caution.