An examination of some of the factors that can weaken the therapeutic nature of the patient-physician relationship and how a physician can resolve them in the patient's best interest.
When patients request drugs for nonmedical reasons, the most effective intervention may be to explore with the patient his or her reasons for using drugs to make lifestyle changes.
Language barriers that affect medical care may have legal consequences. The areas of legal concern for doctors are medical malpractice, informed consent, duty to warn, and patients' privacy rights.
Guidelines exist for delivery-room treatment for newborns at the margins of viability, and when the rules and limits are reached, parental values are important.
Guidelines exist for delivery-room treatment for newborns at the margins of viability, and when the rules and limits are reached, parental values are important.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Clinical facts and physicians’ ethical obligations are critical in resolving disagreements between parents and physicians about resuscitation of an extremely premature infant.
Nonlegal, judicial, and statutory courses of action are available to patient surrogates and physicians who cannot agree on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.