This article examines conceptual limitations of extant accounts of palliative psychiatry, with a focus on obligations to distinguish among and clearly formulate goals of care.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(9):E710-717. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.710.
Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
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.”
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.
Equating conscience with clinical judgment challenges the way that ethics is marginalized in medical education. Ethics is simply an account of what good medical practice looks like in particular situations.
A substantial proportion of patients seen by physicians have had an abortion or will have one in the future, yet acquiring the necessary skills to care for 30 percent of the female patient population has been made challenging for future physicians by a number of laws and amendments.
If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.
When ventilator support is being withdrawn from a dying child, responsive titration of sedative medications by the ICU team can relieve suffering without anesthetizing the child completely or hastening death.