Survey of faculty physicians at the University of Pennsylvania led to a list of proposals for health care reforms beyond those included in the Affordable Care Act.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(7):680-688. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.7.sect2-1507.
Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA and Amy P. Abernethy, MD, PhD
One strategy to promote adherence is the use of “care pathways,” effectively roadmaps that seek to standardize cancer treatment on the basis of some agreed-upon set of guidelines within a particular center or group of patients.
There are few situations in which the standard of care is so clear-cut as to preclude physician judgment. Assessing the degree of need (not just the standard of care) when asking a patient to spend money requires judgment.
The experience of an English professor dying of ovarian cancer in Margaret Edson’s play Wit shows that both literary and medical discourse obfuscate and objectify rather than promote communication of “simple human truths” that dignify life and death.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(9):858-864. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.9.imhl1-1509.
Narrative ethics derives its ethical force from continually comparing and critiquing new narratives against existing narratives that guide the way we live.