AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Patients can now easily view their health records, so clinicians must consider a reader’s interpretation of how they convey sensitive personal health information. What might this mean for ethics consultants?

As larger organizations become more influential in the health care sector, the Code can help physicians navigate those organizations’ influence on their practices.

Decision aids could help clinicians know when to request ethics consultation or re-evaluate blood product usage in a specific patient care situation.

Rather than relying on decision aids, values-based approaches to decision making illuminate a plurality of possible right actions.

When patients are unable to express their wishes and do not have surrogates or advance directives, which and whose values should inform decision making for them? We discuss ethical complexities of caring for unrepresented patients.

Medical students’ moral distress about end-of-life cases can be reduced through ethics consultation and ethics rounds, narrative reflection, and mentoring.

Interdisciplinary ethics consultation helps address organizational policies, practices, and structures that can be sources of moral distress.

The method of situational diagnosis can be used to separate ethical issues from relational dynamics and legal constraints in complex cases.

Medically futile/inappropriate treatments and rationing have distinct ethical justifications and applications and require separate policies.

Health care ethics committees may fail in their role as mediators if their members lack impartiality, independence, or expertise in policy formation.