Dr Cynthia Geppert joins Ethics Talk to discuss how teaching health professions students and trainees about palliative psychiatry reinvigorates core philosophy of medicine investigations into what health care is for.
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.
Addicts quickly learn the diagnoses that cannot be definitively confirmed or ruled out by examinations or test results but that elicit prescriptions for opioid pain management.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Sarah Waliany, a fourth-year medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine, interviewed Louise Andrew, MD, JD, about mental health challenges for physicians and medical students and some strategies for colleagues to assist and intervene.
The primary care physician and activist Dr. Gordon Schiff advises those advocating for systemic change to set priorities, work with others, and realize the power of small actions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):465-468. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.mnar1-1505.
The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) seeks to build trusting relationships with patients before addressing their medical needs and to take account of their surrounding environment in treatment.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):469-472. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.mnar2-1505.
Forced sterilization of HIV-positive women, which is widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Chile, violates women’s human right to autonomy and the principle of informed consent and is medically unnecessary.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):952-957. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.pfor2-1510.
Physicians who torture historically have not been held accountable by the law or medical profession, but national medical associations can promote accountability.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):945-951. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.pfor1-1510.
Although force-feeding prisoners might seem to be in the interests of beneficence and justice, international codes of ethics permit prisoners to refuse nourishment if they make a rational, uncoerced choice to do so.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):904-908. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.ecas2-1510.