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.”
Victims of sexual violence who are minors should not be forced to submit to a rape kit exam against their wishes since it might retraumatize the patient.
AMA J Ethics. 2018; 20(1):36-43. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.1.ecas2-1801.
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.
There is evidence that children who are unaware of their life-threatening diagnoses do not experience any less distress and anxiety than those who are told, and in some cases they may actually experience more.
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.