This month, AMA Journal of Ethics editor-in-chief Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Wendy Levinson, MD, about the efforts of the Choosing Wisely initiative to foster cultural change in medicine cross-nationally by stimulating dialogue about overuse of tests and treatments

This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs.

Dr Maeve Pascoe joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer: “Who Should Talk to Patients and How About Whether They Have Access to Sufficient, Quality Sleep?”

Dr Olivia Kates talks about appropriate use of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We really can't promise both more transplants and better outcomes. The controversies over organ allocation really represent intellectual exhaustion in the face of a long series of inadequate policy responses to the decade-long trend of the kidney supply increasing only at the expense of organ quality and patient outcomes.

Caring for severe burn injuries in low- and middle-income countries requires making decisions about resource allocation given particular contextual factors.

Unclear regulations and informal data gathering on immigrants who receive or donate organs can cause mistrust and suspicion of the organ allocation system and affect donation rates.

Organ donor potential should not be considered during active resuscitation of trauma patients, and trauma surgeons should not make organ donation requests.

Although identical twin-to-twin skin grafting has resulted in excellent survival rates in burn patients, the nature and scope of ethical decision making in monozygotic sibling skin grafting needs further examination.