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While monstrous hurricanes are not a frequent occurrence, it always pays to be prepared. Hurricane Sandy was something of an anomaly, but cities and hospitals in the Northeast braced for the monster hurricane, putting plans in place to evacuate patients when needed and ways to continue operations even if the worst happened.
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Patient autonomy and parental rights are two primary ethical concerns involving access to emergency contraception, which was recently approved with over-the-counter status without age restriction.
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Clinical ethicists typically play an advisory role, and their recommendations arent always accepted or followed by the clinical team.
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Vermont, Oregon, Washington, and Montana now allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who meet certain criteria and request lethal prescriptions.
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Social media provides significant opportunities in medical practice, but ethical concerns include inappropriate use, which threatens the relationship between physicians and patients.
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The Supreme Courts recent ruling that DNA is a product of nature and not patent-eligible is expected to lower prices and make genetic tests more accessible to larger segments of the population.
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New research suggests that efforts to improve the identification and treatment of pain may have contributed to an over-reliance on prescription opioids.
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The future of infection prevention hinges in large part on greater public awareness of the vital role IPs play in protecting patients throughout the health care system, an acknowledgement that is needed to preserve and expand program resources, said Patti Grant, RN, BSN, MS, CIC, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
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Though the value of infection prevention programs goes without saying today, there was a time when the field was first forming that there was little to no evidence that the basic tenets of infection prevention were essential to protect hospital patients and prevent what were then called nosocomial infections.
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The IRB office at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City takes its standard operating procedures (SOPs) very seriously. The IRB even dedicates one highly experienced, part-time professional to make frequent revisions and improvements to the SOPs and guidance.