With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
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.
Drivers, physicians, and motor vehicle agencies all have some responsibility in reducing the number of fatal traffic accidents caused by driver sleepiness.
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 Epidemic Intelligence Service, by Douglas H. Hamilton, traces the history of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, with details about the service’s response to actual and potential epidemic outbreaks.
Article explains the right granted to state public health agencies by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts to mandate vaccination in the presence of actual or threatened danger to the health of its residents from infectious disease.
A review of the case of a physician accused of euthanizing four patients following Hurricane Katrina and the state attorney's unethical conduct in releasing information to the media.