The question is whether the medi-spa is a consumer-driven, profit-motivated business that happens to fall under the purview of medical practice or a legitimate and integral part of the health care system? Does it fulfill consumers’ desires or relieve suffering and promote wellness?
Anyone who has substantiated suspicion of ethical misconduct in research has a responsibility to report that suspicion to the appropriate authorities. He or she should not gossip about suspected misconduct with friends, colleagues, or others.
Is our generation of physicians somehow “weaker” because we’d rather not spend our entire lives at the office? Physicians who trained and practiced under more grueling conditions wonder how we expect to be competent physicians if we don’t work at it?
Katherine Gentry, MD, MA and Aaron Wightman, MD, MA
A patient’s refusal of tracheostomy during an anticipated difficult intubation prompts critical questions about how to best express respect for a pediatric patient’s autonomy and whether and when deviation from standard of care is clinically and ethically appropriate.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E683-689. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.683.
Alexander Craig, MPhil and Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH
Eliciting the patient’s motives and goals and helping the patient and her loved ones explore alternatives are essential to maintaining trusting relationships and open communication.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E690-698. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.690.
Peter T. Hetzler III and Lydia S. Dugdale, MD, MAR
Countering overmedicalization of death requires acknowledging that dying patients are living patients. It also requires persistent focus on health and wholeness, especially at the end of life, and a solid interdisciplinary approach to supporting dying patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E766-773. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.766.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
An emerging medical ethics issue is whether to delay posting pathology reports to electronic health records (EHR) to allow clinicians time to follow up.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(8):826-832. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.pfor1-1608.