This case illustrates how emergency physicians find themselves with an empty toolbox and must compromise to meet their responsibilities to patients and themselves.
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.
According to documented studies, patients who have good relationships with their physicians are less likely to file complaints in the event of an adverse medical outcome.
Medicine, a high-energy consumer and generator of much waste—some of it toxic—must scale back the health care enterprise in the interest of preserving a livable environment.
There is a market for direct-to-consumer genetic testing and a need for better consumer information and more regulation of tests and testing laboratories.
U.S. and international medical organizations recommend against testing children for genetic diseases that occur after adolescence and for which no prevention or treatment is available.