Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to consider key questions about clinical and legal risk management for clinicians trying keep patients safe and for patients with complex pregnancies trying to stay alive.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.
This narrative information graphic contextualizes the lack of current maternal morbidity and mortality data in the United States since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(1):E92-93. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.92.
Preventing bad outcomes for teens and their offspring was the impetus behind confidential care for reproductive health. Requiring parental involvement created an obstacle to the provision of necessary care.
Refusal of pediatric euthanasia can be considered iatrogenic insofar as it inadvertently prolongs patient suffering, but attitudes differ cross-culturally.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(8):802-814. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.8.msoc1-1708.
For a medical school admissions committee to consider social networking activities during the selection process without informing candidates would violate the principles of transparency and consistency and could lead to worthy applications being rejected.
Physicians who have adequately informed a competent patient of his or her diagnosis, its meaning, and medically appropriate options should then accept the patient’s informed consent or refusal of treatment.