The AMA's Code of Medical Ethics is cited as the gold standard for issues surrounding informed consent by family members for procedures to be performed on the newly deceased.
Physicians must maintain their professional and ethical duties to patients even in light of health care corporations employing a growing number of physicians.
Physicians should approach potentially difficult patients in the emergency department with calm reassurances, in the presence of aides or security to assist the physician, and determine whether emergency or urgent medical care is needed.
An attending physician in an urban teaching hospital faces an ethical dilemma when a mother refused to allow an African American medical student to examine her child.
Physicians must be able to decide when to accept a patient's decision in the event that the decision seems irrational or does not seem to be in the patient's best interest.
An ethical case explores whether a physician who wants to terminate his professional relationship with a noncompliant hemodialysis patient has an obligation to treat the patient if the patient has a disability.