Language barriers that affect medical care may have legal consequences. The areas of legal concern for doctors are medical malpractice, informed consent, duty to warn, and patients' privacy rights.
I’m sorry laws, enacted in the majority of states, encourage physicians to apologize for unexpected outcomes and errors by making such apologies inadmissible in civil court to prove liability.
When evaluating the developments and complications of a marginally viable premature infant, physicians and parents must work together to decide on treatment that is in the infant’s best interest.
A hypothetical clinical case discusses patient demand for advanced diagnostics such as MRIs when physicians do not recommend such tests. Better patient education is the suggested approach.
Physicians do not have to give therapies or perform procedures that they judge to be futile and Catholic patients have the moral right to determine what is extraordinary or ordinary care.