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The Affordable Care Act invested significantly in comparative effectiveness research (CER), but at the same time, states that no decisions coming out of CER should determine what treatments are covered by insurers, notes Norman Daniels, PhD, professor of ethics and population health at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA.
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Health care providers frequently have misconceptions about legal requirements of end-of-life care. By educating providers about how to make decisions when people lose capacity, fewer formal ethics or legal consults will be needed.
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Advance directives enabling people with advanced dementia to refuse food and water as a way of hastening death are controversial.
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The Food and Drug Administration recently held hearings on mitochondrial manipulation to determine whether additional research is needed before proceeding to clinical trials. Ethical concerns include:
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Bioethicists can advocate for improved communication with family caregivers when a patient is going to be discharged from the hospital.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) recommended in 2013 that predictive genetic testing for adult-onset disorders should not be done in children.
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Older individuals who have experience with end-of-life care of others demonstrate greater readiness to participate in advance care planning, according to a recent study.
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Patients get the specific care they want at the end of life when they document their wishes using a physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) form, according to a recent study.
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Organ donation consent rates are significantly lower among Hispanics, blacks, and Asians compared to whites, according to recent studies.
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The quality of palliative care training in critical care medicine programs and the use of bedside tools were independently associated with reduced intensive care unit (ICU) use at the end of life.
