Medical Ethics Advisor
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Can Interactive Tools Make Informed Consent Patient Friendly?
For someone weighing whether to participate in a clinical trial, receiving a 20-page consent form can act as a deterrent. IRBs should be thinking about the consequences of information overload.
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Updated Ethics Guidance on Medical Informatics
Privacy, security, informed consent, and conflict of interest are ethical issues in healthcare that also are relevant in the health informatics field. A revised code of ethics from the American Medical Informatics Association addresses these and other concerns.
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Ethical Approaches for Accurate Patient-Reported Outcome Measures
When researchers are comparing treatments in clinical trials, proxy reports might be a useful surrogate for patients whose self-report cannot be obtained or is unreliable.
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What Happens if Post-Approval Studies Are Delayed or Do Not Show Benefit?
Essentially, the ethical issues are how to consider the interests of patients today, who are willing to accept uncertainty in the hopes a drug works because they do not have time to wait, and the interests of patients tomorrow, who would prefer to have stronger evidence about what works and what does not.
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Disclosure Needed if Physicians Own Outpatient Facilities
Physician ownership creates an inherent conflict of interest, known as “dual agency.” This means the physician has a personal financial stake that could conflict with the ethical obligation toward patient well-being.
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CDC Tries Less Rigid Approach to Opioid Prescribing Guidelines
Agency underscores voluntary nature of its recommendations, highlights new science and collaboration that went into the revisions.
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Artificial Intelligence Soon Could Transform the Field of Clinical Ethics
Using a tool that could introduce bias into a clinical situation or during an ethics consult is problematic. To address these and other issues, ethicists can and should be part of their facility's artificial intelligence oversight board.
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Researchers Overlook Unintended Consequences of Health Technology
Health technology studies usually cover research ethics related to conducting the study. However, paper authors often seem to omit details about the ethical implications of the technology itself. This gap is important to consider in an era of dramatically advancing technology.
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Shared Decision-Making Is Ethical Balancing Act for Clinicians
Physicians should always inform, usually recommend, sometimes attempt to persuade — but never manipulate or coerce.
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Decision-Making Capacity Is Concern for Older Study Participants
It likely is an accident if investigators enroll participants lacking decision-making capacity in trials. Since capacity to consent is not a mandated area to report for most journals publishing research, it may be left out for space or other reasons. Nevertheless, some researchers are seeking to start a conversation about this.