Patients can now easily view their health records, so clinicians must consider a reader’s interpretation of how they convey sensitive personal health information. What might this mean for ethics consultants?
Camillo Lamanna, MMathPhil, MBBS and Lauren Byrne, MBBS
Perhaps machine learning systems trained on patients’ electronic health records and social media footprints could be used as decision aids when patients lack capacity or face overwhelming decisions.
Large precision health initiatives like the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us campaign raise important ethical questions about consent, privacy, and inclusivity. This month on Ethics Talk, we explore with Dr Katie Johansen Taber and Ysabel Duron strategies for protecting participants and ensuring that diverse communities are represented.
A lack of consensus guidelines or a belief that current evidence does not support such guidelines might be justified if a clinician expresses a commitment to patient-centered care and shared decision making.
Parents’ false beliefs can be engaged respectfully to motivate deliberations about shared values and goals, but refusal of clinically indicated treatment could warrant reporting.
Annette Hanson, MD, Ron Pies, MD, and Mark Komrad, MD
Authors respond to “How Should Physicians Care for Dying Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?” by arguing that patients’ motives for accessing death with dignity laws should be thoroughly explored and that temporarily limiting patient autonomy can promote well-being at the end of life.
Alexander Craig, MPhil and Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH
Responding to “Added Points of Concern about Caring for Dying Patients,” authors argue that physicians’ refusal to prescribe lethal drugs in accordance with states’ death with dignity laws could damage patient-physician relationships and harm patients.