Medical Ethics Advisor
RSSArticles
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Pediatric Critical Care Providers at Risk for Compassion Fatigue
There has been much attention paid to burnout in physicians; in contrast, less attention has been paid to compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction.
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Chaplains Want More Inclusion in Patient Care Discussions
The key role chaplains perceived themselves to play was as liaisons between the patient, family, and medical team.
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New Ethical Guidance on Response to Physician Impairment
Questions about impairment should address a physician’s current status rather than his or her history, not distinguish between mental and physical health, and elicit objective information about functional status.
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Study: Shared Decision-Making Occurs Too Late
Close collaboration between ethics and the ICU clinical team can go a long way toward addressing this issue.
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Unexpected Findings on Web-Based Tool for ICU Surrogates
Family caregivers answered questions about the patient’s values, then the computer-based guide made treatment recommendations. However, these were disregarded in more than half of cases. Families frequently chose a more aggressive goal of treatment than the patient’s values suggested.
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Ethical Concerns When Pediatric Palliative Care Patients Visit EDs
One ethicist encourages completion of a Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form where appropriate and available. This puts goals and advance care planning into a set of medical orders that are transferrable across healthcare settings.
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Debate Over Whether ‘Conscience Rule’ Engenders Diversity or Paternalism
Ethicists must balance the rights of providers who have genuine conscience reasons for withholding treatment with the rights of patients to high-quality treatment for all conditions.
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Of Hospitalist Cases With Ethical Issue Identified, Few Formal Consults Occurred
In a recent analysis, 270 patients were evaluated, and 113 ethical issues were identified in 77 of those patients. However, only five formal consults were brought to the facility’s ethics committee for these 270 patients. What does that mean?
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Few Cardiology Treatment Recommendations Based on High-Quality Evidence
The proportion of recommendations supported by data from randomized controlled trials actually decreased from 2008. In looking at updated guidelines, the researchers found that fewer recommendations were supported by randomized controlled trials than in the prior versions.
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Ethics of Cellphone Use in Clinic Waiting Rooms
Ethical issues related to patient cellphone use center around the physician-patient relationship. At issue: How to balance the value of both physicians’ and patients’ time.