AMA Journal of Ethics^®

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.

Dr Mitesh Patel joins us on this episode of Ethics Talk to discuss nudges, how they can be used effectively in health care, and how to identify and avoid the potential ethical pitfalls of guiding behavior.

This comic conveys the absurdity of overreliance on symptom measures and excessive testing in contemporary clinical decision making and health care practice.

Mandating processes that are not evidence based generates distress among patients and clinicians, so physician advocacy in national, state, and local policymaking is key.

Pain is the most common reason patients seek health care. The AMA Pain Care Task Force suggests how clinicians can offer good pain care and become savvy about situating themselves in the health care system to do so.

Six recommendations focus on specific actions to help reverse the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS®) protocols vary by surgery type and are compared, clinically and ethically, to traditional protocols.

Anesthesiologists regularly take breaks during operations, but surgeons do so rarely. Current literature describes the influence of breaks on attention, focus, and stamina.

Despite drawbacks of immunosuppression and surgery, vascularized composite allotransplants can enhance lives of patients who meet candidacy criteria and are well supported.

Recent advances in UTx suggest it is on a trajectory toward becoming an accepted clinical practice to treat absolute uterine factor infertility.