Medical Ethics Advisor
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Some Older, Chronically Ill Patients Don’t Realize They Have a Choice in Deciding Surgery
Patients and family members were surprised that postoperative recovery was so difficult, and lacked knowledge on advance directives and the fact that they could decline major surgery.
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Drastic Surge in Drug Prices: ‘Unethical and Immoral’
A new business model is emerging in which pharmaceutical companies buy the rights to a drug, then raise the price dramatically. Often, the drugs are produced by one manufacturer, with few or no alternatives.
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New Report Examines Ethics of Gene Drive Research
A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examines the ethics of gene drive research.
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Physicians Paid to Refer Patients: ‘Fundamental and Clear’ Ethical Violation
The nonprofit hospital system Broward Health in Florida recently agreed to pay $70 million to settle allegations that it engaged in “improper financial relationships” under laws prohibiting kickbacks for patient referrals.
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Provide High-Quality Ethics Education on a Limited Budget
Medical institutions didn’t always understand the importance of ethics to physician training, notes Timothy Lahey, MD, MMSc, chair of the clinical ethics committee at Lebanon, NH-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and associate professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine.
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New Palliative Care Policy Aims to Reduce Barriers
A new palliative care policy statement from a leading heart and stroke organization aims to reduce barriers that prevent many patients from receiving palliative care. -
Conflicts on Prognosis Occur Over Half the Time Between Physicians and Surrogate Decision-Makers
Conflicts between physicians and surrogate decision-makers involving the patient’s prognosis occur more than half the time, according to a recent study.
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Close Ties Between Surgeons and Device Reps Raises Ethical Concerns
“I often felt like I’m driving up the costs of the healthcare system …We used to sell an implant that has 99% survivorship at 15 years, which is great, right? We were told to not ever market it to anybody … If a doctor asked for it by name, we would give it to him. We want to market the newer, the better technology. I’m not certain I ever thought the newer technology was better. There certainly wasn’t data on it … I was uncomfortable with those sorts of things.”
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People with Mental Illness Often Excluded from Clinical Trials
If a medication for major depression has a dangerous adverse interaction with a different medication that’s being studied in a clinical trial, will it be discovered by researchers and reported in the literature? Not likely, if no one enrolled in the study has major depression.
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Physicians Have New Guidance on Ethics of Telemedicine
A patient asks her physician, whom she’s never seen previously, a particularly sensitive medical question. How does this interaction differ if the patient is at home, viewing the doctor’s response on a computer screen?