An overview of Maine's pilot program to reduce the practice of defensive medicine in certain specialties by assuring legal protection for doctors who follow particular guidelines and discussion of why it was not used in malpractice litigation.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;13(11):792-795. doi:
10.1001/virtualmentor.2011.13.11.pfor1-1111.
Physicians have a responsibility to assess elderly patients for conditions that could affect their ability to drive safely and to be familiar with state laws that govern physician duty to report impaired drivers.
A medical student's perspective on the importance of empathy in patient-physician relationships and a reflection on how empathy was taught in his medical school.
Medical malpractice pits the legal system's ethics of client advocacy against the medical profession's ethics of patient advocacy. Fear of liability may lead to defensive medicine, an aberration of both professions' intent.
The military medical ethics curriculum is outlined by the director of medical ethics programs at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Physicians have a professional obligation and, in many states, a legal duty to report drivers whose functional or cognitive impairments may pose a safety hazard.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.