A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
No matter where your medical career takes you, you will most likely encounter patients facing barriers to accessing health care. Everyone needs to prepare to care for underserved patients.
Erwin C. Wang, MHA, Megan Prior, Jenny M. Van Kirk, Stephen A. Sarmiento, Margaret M. Burke, MS, Christine Oh, MS, Eileen S. Moore, MD, and Stephen Ray Mitchell, MD
Policies and systems are slow to resolve structural disparities in access to insurance coverage and health care, but physicians can act now.
Shannon U. Waterman, MD, Amanda Kost, MD, Rachel Lazzar, MSW, and Sharon Dobie, MD, MCP
The Underserved Pathway at the University of Washington School of Medicine helps prepare future physicians to work with underserved populations by providing a foundation of practical knowledge and real-world experiences.
Journalists must balance the need for information about disaster events against an individual’s right to privacy or the possible effects of disturbing images on the viewing population.
Asymmetry in knowledge and power between (1) physicians and patients and (2) physician educators and their students creates a climate for possible abuse in both sets of relationships.
Antibiotics can be compared to other forms of “tragedy of the commons,” whereby a common good (effective treatment of infections) is jeopardized by individual consumption and lack of stewardship.