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Palliative care is an obligation owed every patient with critical disease, and not just those for whom curative options have been exhausted, according to a national medical society.
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One individual in the UK, who happens to be on the Salford City Council in Great Britain, has introduced what is being called the "right-to-die card" in that country and has set off a controversy among those in the Christian pro-life movement and those who choose it as a way to make their wishes known in the event they are incapacitated due to sudden injury or illness.
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There's no doubt that physicians are the linchpin of the healthcare system. And when it comes to patient education and counsel regarding diagnoses, prognoses and possible death, they also bear the leadership role.
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So noted Barbara Chanko, RN, a health care ethicist who was one of the speakers in a Veterans Health Administration national ethics teleconference in late May.
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By ignoring red flags of dangers posed to patients subjected to tests of hemoglobin-based blood substitutes (HBBS), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed trials to continue when stopping them eight years ago would have saved lives, a blistering report released in April asserts.
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When research calls for recruiting patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, it's often hard to know whether patients would want to participate had they been able to make the decision themselves.
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In the wake of complaints from doctors who said a November 2007 opinion from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) threatened their rights of conscience, ACOG has issued a statement insisting it "affirms the importance of conscience in shaping ethical professional conduct" and will re-examine the controversial opinion, which states that physicians who oppose sterilization and abortion are compelled to refer patients to doctors who don't object to the procedures.
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A physician working in a clinic that sees a high percentage of minority patients who live in public housing reports a difficult time obtaining reports from other providers; his peers in more affluent parts of town who see fewer minority patients report no such delays.
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Genetics research tells us that every person has as many as six or even more genetic mutations placing him or her at risk for some disease.
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"At what price is cure a goal? And what price does hope carry?" Lindsay E. Rockwell, MD, a Northampton, MA oncologist, wrote in a 2007 JAMA article.
