Medical Ethics Advisor
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Unique Ethical Dilemmas for Mental Healthcare of Infants, Young Children
Infant and early childhood mental health practitioners face complex and unique ethical issues. Experts argue that a code of ethics is urgently needed.
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Ethicists Find that Empathy, Accurate Information Defuse Conflicts
Families may interpret the word “futile” to mean that clinicians are just giving up, that the patient is not important enough to continue the current level of care, or even that clinicians are trying to clear the bed for a more deserving patient.
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What Is Futile Care? Clinicians, Families Have Different Views
Many ethics consults involve conflicts between clinicians and families about end-of-life care. After speaking with the various parties, ethicists sometimes realize that the root of the issue is differing views of what constitutes “futile” care.
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Nursing Students Have Knowledge Gaps on End-of-Life Communication
Burnout is causing many nurses to consider leaving the field of nursing altogether, as evidenced by multiple recent studies. Lack of preparation for end-of-life care is a source of considerable stress for nursing students.
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Do Clinicians Follow Ethics Recommendations? Relationships Are Important Factor
Ethicists often make recommendations after a consult — but does anyone actually follow them?
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Researchers Focus on Readability of Informed Consent Forms
Informed consent forms in research studies are required to include a concise “key information” section. However, not all the key information sections were easy to comprehend, according to a group of researchers.
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Ethical Guidance Needed for Social Media Data in Research
Many public health researchers use YouTube data in their research, but ethical practices are unclear.
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Education – and an EMR Tab – Boosts Advance Care Planning
Educating patients on advance care planning (ACP) and documenting this education is within the scope of nursing. This article outlines a quality improvement project to educate nurses on the importance of ACP.
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Ethicists Can Find Consensus over Patient’s DNR Status
With very few exceptions, patients have the right to not be resuscitated, and healthcare providers have the duty to respect those wishes. This article discusses how the family and clinical team come to a consensus about the patient’s DNR status.
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Ethical Concerns with Unilateral Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders
Unilateral do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, which are DNR orders placed by clinicians without consent of patients or surrogates, pose some unique ethical concerns. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some clinicians had concerns about how these orders were being used.