Physicians need to be aware of and guard against the liability risks of having nonphysician clinicians provide services that do not meet the standard of care of the practice due to the staff member's inadequate experience or supervision.

Interprofessional collaboration is a vital part of medical education. When a medical student resists learning from a nurse-midwife on a rotation, how should an academic medical faculty member respond?

Pathologists should work cooperatively with clinicians and provide guidance about appropriate testing to uphold the medical ethics principle of justice.

Many nonphysician health care practitioners are looking to expand their scope of practice.

Cytopathologists frequently interact directly with patients at their bedsides to perform fine needle aspiration procedures. When, if ever, should cytopathologists share preliminary diagnostic impressions directly with patients?

The harms of communicating autism risk can be avoided by helping families to understand risk and to distinguish between poor and good sources of scientific information, which should take families’ interests into account.

In treating children with autism, physicians should reframe the common dynamic in which the family wants medication that the doctor is withholding to focus instead on the family’s and physician’s share goal—the patient’s well-being.

Minors, including those with autism, have the right in certain states to make decisions about their own medical care provided they meet certain criteria. Even in cases in which the “mature minor exception” does not apply, physicians should actively engage patients in discussion of their treatment.

In treating children with autism, physicians should focus on involving parents in a shared decision making partnership and seeking safe, evidence-based, and medically and cost-effective treatments.