After the infant’s birth, the neonatologist’s first duty is to his or her patient—the newly born infant. If clinical circumstances are different than anticipated, the physician must first consider the best interests of the baby.
Dr Whitney Riley Linsenmeyer joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Sarah Garwood: “Patient-Centered Approaches to Using BMI to Evaluate Gender-Affirming Surgery Eligibility.”
There are at least two considerations here: the patient’s perception of a physician’s empathic expression and the physician’s level of comfort with expressing empathy and attending to patients’ emotions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(2):111-115. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2015.17.2.ecas1-1502.