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Barriers to Ethical Informed Consent with Hereditary Cancer Genetic Testing
Demand for hereditary cancer genetic testing is increasing rapidly as the result of advancements in technology and growing awareness of the utility of testing in cancer prevention and treatment. Clinicians have an ethical responsibility to ensure patients can make a fully informed decision about undergoing genetic testing.
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Ethicists Offer Unique Skills to Address Workplace Violence
For hospitals attempting to address workplace violence, the focus typically is on concrete interventions: Providing de-escalation training, adding metal detectors, or bolstering security. What is less well-understood are the ethical implications of violence.
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How Is the Ethics Service Doing? Data Are Necessary to Know
Unlike clinical areas, which are required to track a large number of healthcare quality measures, many ethics programs have little data to demonstrate their effectiveness. One reason is that assessing an ethics consult is not as straightforward as tracking the rate of hospital-acquired infections or surgical complications.
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Effective Ethics Education in Nurse Residency Programs
While directing the nurse residency program at a large midwestern academic teaching hospital, Rebecca West, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, observed that many recent graduates were highly distressed over ethical issues. One new nurse was intensely uncomfortable with completing orders for aggressive treatment for a patient clearly in the process of dying. The nurse did not think to request an ethics consultation. West and colleagues authored a recent paper on the benefits of embedding ethics content in nurse residency programs.
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Some Patients Request Ethics Consults — but for Issues Unrelated to Ethics
At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, ethicists added a “Request Ethics Consultation” button to the electronic patient portal. However, of 74 ethics consult requests made through the portal, just one involved an ethics issue. All of the other requests fell outside the purview of the Ethics Consultation Service, such as people wanting help with hospital resources or care coordination.
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Can Ethicists Be Sued for Recommendations? Attorneys Warn of Potential Legal Risks
The field of clinical ethics continues to evolve, with core competencies, certification, and documentation in the electronic medical record. In a recent paper, Claudia R. Sotomayor, MD, DBe, HEC-C, chief of the Ethics Consultation Service and a clinical ethicist at Georgetown University’s Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics in Washington, DC, and colleagues explored whether the professionalization of ethics consultation exposes those working in this field to the types of liability claims faced by professionals in other fields.
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Ohio Appellate Court Refuses New Trial for Patient Plaintiff with Errors in Record on Appeal
Recently, an appeals court in Ohio affirmed a verdict finding a defendant group of doctors not liable for medical malpractice in failing to detect a woman’s cancerous tumor. After the jury reached a verdict for the defendants, the plaintiff argued that her lawyer should have been allowed to impeach the defendant pathologist who she accused of failing to detect her cancerous growth.
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Virginia Supreme Court Orders New Trial in Medical Malpractice Case After Trial Court Refuses to Give Jury Instruction About Alternative Causes
Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered a new trial in a medical malpractice case in which a woman was awarded $1.6 million. The verdict was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. However, on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, the court found that the trial court erred by refusing to give the defendants’ proposed jury instruction on the issue of alternative causation to the jury.
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OCR Investigates Change Healthcare After Major Cyber Incident
In an unusual move signifying the severity of the huge cyberattack on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group breach, the Office of Civil Rights is formally investigating the incident.
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Steps to Take in Response to OCR Guidance on Online Tracking
The Office of Civil Rights’ updated guidance on HIPAA and online tracking technologies leaves many questions, but covered entities should take certain steps now.