An analysis conducted at a Massachusetts hospital regarding ethics consults related to opioid prescriptions could provide useful insight for other facilities seeing a rise in such requests.
Ethics consultants and palliative care clinicians are obvious partners in the task of caring for patients in pain. The skills of each group, when combined, are of great potential benefit to patients and their families.
Federal law requires hospitals to inform patients of the need to choose a surrogate. However, many institutions perform this task poorly, due in part to a lack of clear policies, proper training, and other support. There are a few ways the ethics team can help.
Hospitals continue to see a surge of psychiatric patients coming to their EDs. Some end up admitted involuntarily — and not always appropriately. Certain emerging patterns are ethically troubling.
There is a great deal of research on burnout in the literature, but little of it is specific to advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants. Now, researchers have gathered such information, which revealed rays of light for those on the verge of leaving the profession.
The average person carries more than 500,000 rare or novel genetic variants, thousands of which might be identified during a genomics research study. The question is whether, and how, people should be told about any of these findings.
