AMA Journal of Ethics

For patients historically stripped of control over their reproductive health, consideration of past violations and transparent discussion are key.

Native Americans suffer poverty and significant health inequity and are chronically underrepresented in the clinician workforce.

A nudge is an intervention designed to prompt a person to “voluntarily” make a choice intended by those who altered an environment or situation to yield that choice.

Social work perspectives on whether prescribers should authorize opioid refills emphasize the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to patient self-determination.

Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.

Whether a patient’s decisional regret constitutes a failure of shared decision making can depend on how a decision was made.

Shared decision making honors patient autonomy, particularly for preference-sensitive care decisions and even when patients have impaired decision-making capacity.

Current policy requires separate informed consent for some Public Health Service increased-risk donors, and this can make shared decision making harder.

Prognostic uncertainty about risk creates demand for ongoing communication and facilitated reflection about goals and values.

Decision making in health care demands that we balance multiple considerations, like quality of life, statistics, and how different options could affect others. Dr Brian Zikmund-Fisher shares his own experience as a patient and explains how decision science can help us navigate ethically complex health decisions.