The participatory decision-making model for patient-physician relationships is the best approach for addressing the individual family-related and social influences that stress that relationship.
Pairing medical students with chronically ill community volunteers for 2 years helps those students gain appreciation for the experience of illness, develop self-reflection and perspective-taking, and learn to communicate with people who may be quite unlike them.
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, David Munson, MD, and Wynne Morrison, MD
The way that we choose how to frame the conversation with parents about halting or continuing such therapy for their children who will not recover has special importance in medicine and in society.
Raphael P. Viscidi, MD and Keerti V. Shah, MD, DrPH
The arguments for mandatory vaccination with human papillomavirus vaccine differs from the justification for mandatory use of vaccines that protect against more easily transmitted diseases.
Article explains the right granted to state public health agencies by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts to mandate vaccination in the presence of actual or threatened danger to the health of its residents from infectious disease.
The ongoing anthrax vaccination case, Doe v Rumsfeld, tests whether the military can require participation in and punish refusal of a vaccination program while waiving informed consent.
Physicians should demonstrate compassion when the parent of an ill child asks the physician for his or her personal opinion regarding the parents' choice to continue experimental treatment when the prognosis is not good.
Pediatricians should be aware of the cultural issues surrounding body image when they counsel certain patients and their parents about the importance of weight loss and the related health concerns.