When serving an ethnically diverse population, it is imperative that physicians have an understanding of a patients' cultural background and attitudes towards health, nutrition and personal care.
David Collier, MD, PhD, Ronald M. Perkin, MD, MA, and Joseph R. Zanga, MD
The legal definitions of child neglect and child abuse are not as clear cut when faced with the issue of whether parents should be held responsible for failing to follow weight-loss plans for a morbidly obese child.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on the Family recommends that pediatricians take a more active role in helping to insure that the family environment is conducive to a child's emotional and physical well-being.
Refusals of psychotropic medication by detained criminal defendants raise conflicting dual loyalties for psychiatrists between the duty to treat a patient and the duty to protect society from that patient.
Medical ethicists have discussed the use of race classification in determining disease prevalence and the response of specific ethnic groups to different medications.
William E. Novotny, MD and Ronald M. Perkin, MD, MA
Physicians need to understand the resources available to them to serve the sometimes conflicting needs of the pediatric patients' best interest and the religious beliefs of the patients' parents.