An ethical case that was eventually decided in the US Supreme Court involves the right of patients to request an independent third-party review if their HMO refuses to authorize treatments or procedures deemed medically necessary.
A physician describes how patients are selected for gastric bypass surgery in his practice and the lifelong relationship he commits to with his surgical patients.
Patients for gastric bypass surgery should be carefully selected on the basis of several objective factors, and those chosen should be treated and monitored by specialized teams to optimize outcomes.
A psychology professor stresses the importance of cultural competence and cultural sensitivity physicians in meeting the end-of-life care needs of an increasingly diverse patient population.
Readers are referred to an article by J.T. Berger in a 1998 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine and provided with a list of ethical questions to consider about culture and ethnicity in clinical care.