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Dying patients discuss physician-assisted suicide; Public plea spurs new liver, plus some debate; Medical schools tighten conflicts-of-interest standards; Video: How to talk about medical errors.
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One of the most difficult encounters for medical staff is simultaneously informing a family of the death of a loved one and bringing up the idea of donating organs and tissues. Staff awareness of resources to coordinate organ procurement and the staffs attitude toward organ procurement can make a big difference in an areas organ procurement rate.
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When Providence Health Care system, a network providing health care at several sites in Vancouver, BC, was formed in 1997, the ethicist for the system saw an opportunity to build on that peer-adviser idea as a way to handle day-to-day ethical dilemmas. They created ethics mentors in every unit of every hospital in the system.
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From the time of the ancient Greeks, learning about the human body and how to manipulate and treat it has involved the use of cadavers. Western medicine still relies on the use of cadavers for teaching purposes, but one aspect of the use of dead bodies has emerged in recent years as a point of debate: Should medical personnel obtain consent from family members before practicing medical procedures on a newly deceased person?
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A nurse checks in on a 72-year-old patient recovering from pneumonia and, after checking her vital signs, asks if theres anything the patient needs. Instead of asking for water or a snack, the patient replies, Will you pray with me? What is the appropriate answer?
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Patients who participate in clinical trials not only have access to newer, experimental treatments, they also have access to more routine medical checkups and state-of-the-art technologies. Yet for many women, participation in medical research studies is still not an option.
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Expansions in public health insurance programs are designed to offer a safety net to vulnerable Americans unable to obtain basic health insurance and regular access to medical care.
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Studies of terminally ill patients indicate that a small number of them want the option of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) or other means of controlling the manner in which they die. Yet with PAS legal in only one state, most will not have that option.
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Rather than age or severity of illness, the strongest determinants of the withdrawal of ventilation in critically ill patients are often the physicians perception that the patient preferred not to use life support or had a low chance of survival in the intensive care unit, a recent study1 by the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group and the Level of Care Study Investigators has found.
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Several leading medical and science journals fail to enforce their own policies for disclosing financial conflicts of interest among contributing authors, according to a study released July 12 by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
