In treating children with autism, physicians should reframe the common dynamic in which the family wants medication that the doctor is withholding to focus instead on the family’s and physician’s share goal—the patient’s well-being.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):299-304. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.ecas1-1504.
Jason D. Hall, JD, Lee A. Goeddel, MD, MPH, and Thomas R. Vetter, MD, MPH
In the perioperative surgical home, the anesthesiologist coordinates care with other team members to provide seamless continuity from preoperative evaluation to postoperative care.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):243-247. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.stas2-1503.
Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
After assessing the reasons for a patient’s unrealistic hopefulness in the face of clear understanding, a clinician may believe that significant harm will come to the patient if he or she does not acknowledge the seriousness of the illness.
One strategy is to determine “triggers” that alert the primary clinician that the patient has a high symptom burden or difficulty coping with the diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment plans and should be offered palliative care services.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Physicians, including obstetricians, get themselves into preventable ethical conflict very quickly when they go beyond the limits of the expertise supported by evidence-based reasoning and the scientific and clinical competence it creates.