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When providing medical control, devote appropriate attention to cases involving emergency medical services. Patients in the field deserve no less attention than those actually in the ED.
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Medical ethics issues arise before some patients ever reach a hospital or emergency room, as paramedics, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and the physicians who serve as medical directors for emergency medical services (EMS) grapple with resuscitation, triage, and consent issues.
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Some doctors are prescribing the off-label use of antipsychotic medications approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder without strong evidence that they are effective when prescribed instead for dementia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders, according to a government analysis.
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At the end of life, there often comes a point when there's nothing more, clinically, that can be done. That's when the music starts for some patients.
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Most physicians polled for a recent study say they feel an obligation to present all options to patients seeking legal but controversial procedures that the physicians object to, but more than one-quarter say they would not feel compelled to refer the patient to a doctor who did not object to the objectionable procedure.
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Are internal defibrillators and pacemakers biofixtures, like artificial hearts, that should not be deactivated when a patient is dying? Or are they like any other external device for example, supplemental oxygen that are protective of life but employed at the discretion of the user?
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Almost 100% of pediatricians in a recent survey said serious medical errors should be disclosed to patient's families, with almost all saying making that admission to parents would be difficult.
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Many outpatient surgery managers are prepared, at least to some extent, to respond to a disaster in their communities, but what do you do when your facility is the disaster?
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The investigative arm of Congress reported that The Joint Commission and its not-for-profit educational and consulting affiliate, Joint Commission Resources (JCR), have made progress in the past several years to prevent improper sharing of facility-specific information, though continued monitoring is warranted.