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.
Patients need to be aware that they are fully responsible for disclosing a complete medical history, and physicians may not be liable for damages if they do not comply.
Douglas E. Paull, MD, MS and Paul N. Uhlig, MD, MPA
Risk managers can help patient-subjects and clinician-researchers make informed novel device implantation decisions in the absence of preclinical trial data.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(11):E911-918. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.911.
An ethical case describes the use of a pharmacy's database to market directly to their patients without either patient consent or disclosure of the marketing intent of the materials they received.