A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
Advance directives do not always resolve questions about the best care for patients who no longer have decision-making capacity; physicians and patient surrogates can take alternative approaches to arrive at the best care decision.
Paula Tironi, JD, LLM and Monique M. Karaganis, MD
While parents often have legal authority to make decisions regarding pediatric palliative care, federal and state statutory and case laws, like CAPTA, impose significant restrictions on that authority.
With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
People with mental illness or a degenerative mental disease have special protections under the law when entering into contracts or other binding documents.
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.