Medical Ethics Advisor
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Unexpected Events Make Patient’s DNAR Status Complex
Ethicists developed a conditional medical orders form, which summarizes preferences for resuscitation, ventilation, and artificial hydration and nutrition. The form is meant to be used when offering advance care planning or at the bedside of terminally ill patients. It can facilitate more ethical care in nuanced situations.
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Q&A: Ethicists Can Help Clinicians Manage High-Dose Pain Medication Cases
Cases involving high-dose pain medicines can cause conflicts within the clinical team. A palliative care expert explains the ethics of these situations and how to find resolutions.
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Notable Case Puts Spotlight on Ethics of High-Dose Painkillers
Some clinicians are wary of administering high doses of painkillers at the end of life that could hasten death.
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Ethics Knowledge Gaps Exist on Assessing Capacity, Identifying Surrogate Decision-Maker
Clinicians must determine if patients can understand the question, state a choice, appreciate the risks and benefits, and rationalize why their decision aligns with their care preferences. The fact that few participants understand decision-makers and surrogates carries important implications for the ethics field.
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Study Recruitment for End-of-Life Research Raises Ethical Questions
Is it harder for someone near the end of life to participate in research (or to serve as a research advisor) compared to someone with diabetes? A question like this led a group of researchers to explore ethical challenges posed by study recruitment of patient and family advisors for research on end-of-life or palliative care.
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Participant Distress Is Concern for IRBs Reviewing Child Maltreatment Studies
Surveys measuring prevalence of child maltreatment are important knowledge, but IRBs might overestimate the risk to participants.
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Consult Services Should Address Racism and Bias
Hospitals are addressing health equity and combatting racism in all areas, including ethics. Members of an ethics consult service can develop recommendations for consultants to help address health equity and promote anti-racism, both in care of individual patients and in institutional policy.
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Build Emergency Care Research on Strong Regulatory, Financial Foundation
There are some notable gaps in studies of the ethics of emergency care in low- and middle-income countries, according to the authors of a recent analysis.
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The Ethics of Creating a National Congenital Heart Disease Database
The population of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) continues to expand, as patients live longer thanks to advances in surgical and medical care. Thus, there has been increasing interest in creating an ACHD national database for both quality and research purposes.
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Unique Challenges for IRBs Evaluating Radiation Oncology Study Protocols
There may be few if any radiation oncology investigators at some institutions, and radiation therapy involves rapidly advancing technology. In light of this, IRBs might lack the necessary expertise to review these studies.