Clinical case examines physicians’ duties and risks during an epidemic. Commentaries address physician’s rights vs patients’ rights. Does the duty to treat always override personal or family concerns?
Op-Ed article rebuts the notion that an avian flu pandemic is inevitable. Author goes on to say that the panic we induce today will come back to haunt us through public complacency if a monster epidemic does appear.
A mother of a prematurely born son reviews several quality-of-life research studies that highlight the disparity between self-reported quality of life and physician estimates of quality of life.
Appropriate use of the pay-for-performance system may improve quality of care by counteracting physician incentives to overtreat in fee-for-service situations or undertreat in capitation plans.
Dr Katie Savin joins Ethics Talk to discuss their article, coauthored with Drs Laura Guidry-Grimes and Olivia S. Kates: “What Does Disability Justice Require of Antimicrobial Stewardship?”
Physicians should go beyond basic medical diagnosis and treatment to offer support to families about the gamut of social and emotional issues that are involved with caring for a severely disabled child.
A bioethicist argues that two journal articles about quality of life-adjusted years research oversimplifies the issue and do not take into consideration people's abilities to adapt to disability and disease.
A health economics professor believes more research is needed on quality of life-adjusted years to explore the way we describe health states, the elicitation of patient values, and how to develop methods for obtaining informed general population preferences.
Elly A. Stolk, MSc and Floortje E. van Nooten, MSc
Two medical technology researchers argue that patients' own valuations of their health states may result in devaluation of interventions that can help them.