Dr Jonathan Treem joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Joel Yager and Jennifer L. Gaudiani: “A Life-Affirming Palliative Care Model for Severe and Enduring Anorexia Nervosa.”

Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.

A case that illustrates how Western medicine's body or mind approach to diagnosis and treatment can differ from that of many patients from non-Western cultures.

Which distinctions between minimally conscious states and vegetative states should clinicians consider?

The diagnostic and clinical criteria for diagnosing persistent vegetative state.

Psychiatrists should coordinate with primary care physicians when treating patients who have a somatoform disorder.

Because research on the efficacy of approaches to addiction recovery is inconclusive, clinicians should recommend several, including 12-step approaches.

As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.

Hospital ethics committees originated with concerns about legal liability, but today they educate, develop and implement policies, and review cases.

Physicians have a responsibility to balance patient confidentiality and full disclosure to the family of adolescent patients with eating disorders in order to provide optimal treatment.