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.”
Introduction of an intervention that reduces the perceived risk of a given behavior may cause a person to increase risky behavior—this is called “risk compensation.”
Preventing bad outcomes for teens and their offspring was the impetus behind confidential care for reproductive health. Requiring parental involvement created an obstacle to the provision of necessary care.
Web-based physician rating sites are part of a multi-decade cultural shift in the relationship between physicians, patients, and society. But a system in which “patient’s orders” reign is just as lopsided as one that puts “doctor’s orders” in the driver’s seat.
Requirements for informed consent are relatively vague and the exceptions are few, so it is in the physician’s best interest to inform patients about proposed treatment options, ascertain that they understand their choices, and secure their consent.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.
Refusal of pediatric euthanasia can be considered iatrogenic insofar as it inadvertently prolongs patient suffering, but attitudes differ cross-culturally.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(8):802-814. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.8.msoc1-1708.
Donna T. Chen, MD, MPH, Lois Shepherd, JD, and Daniel M. Becker, MD, MPH, MFA
When most statutes about confidential treatment of adolescents were adopted, immunization against sexually transmitted infection was not anticipated, so the statutes contain no specific inclusion of such preventive measures.