Medical Ethics
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For Sale: Private Mental Health Data and Consumer Trust
Once people learn mental health data can be sold or misused, trust erodes. These issues might dissuade people from seeking care online or via an app. For many, that may be their only option.
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Remain Cautious When Using Chatbots to Provide Mental Healthcare
Consider these common, innocuous questions: Are you taking your medications as directed? You look a little upset — is everything OK? Do you need some urgent help? Now, consider if an AI tool, not a human therapist, asked a patient these questions, along with the issues of trust, privacy, and bias. Can humans and machines establish a bond?
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Scientific Journals Confront Ethical Controversy Over ChatGPT
The new artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT is roiling the scientific community. There are a range of ethical concerns in relation to the use of AI for journals. There is risk of bias, inaccuracy, and authorship issues.
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Researchers Address HIV Treatment Gap Among Underserved Population
There are effective medications, but social determinants of health can dictate adherence.
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Physicians Should Educate Patients About Cannabis-Impaired Driving
Primary care providers should discuss frequency of use, dosage, tolerance levels, and withdrawal symptoms. Also, inform patients of the harms, risks, and legal consequences of cannabis-impaired driving.
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Remote Mental Healthcare Facing Ethical, Legal Pushback
Patients might assume they are talking with a licensed therapist, when they actually are speaking with an unlicensed therapist or a mental health coach. That is an ethical violation.
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Ethical Problems with Rural Cancer Patients’ Access to Care
Patients and clinicians should discuss any available data regarding differences in care delivered at potential treatment sites, potential accompanying outcomes differences, and the costs and benefits of pursuing treatment at each site. Rural patient navigators should be involved in this discussion, considering the complexity of care coordination for patients with cancer.
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Making More Protected Time for Clinical Ethics Work
To make a good case for investing in protected time, ethicists can engage with department heads to identify the unmet needs of healthcare providers. Testimonials from providers who have benefitted from ethics consultation demonstrate direct benefit to patient care.
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Should Ethicists Hide Consult Notes from Patients?
Ethics consults often are accompanied by conflict, intense emotions, sensitive or controversial topics, and disagreements about values. Ethics notes tend to incorporate more narrative and explicit analysis than other clinical notes. For the sake of transparency, instead of shielding notes, consider excluding details that are likely to cause harm.
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Efforts Underway to Diversify Clinical Ethics Field
Success depends on available ethics resources and overall organizational diversity. Broader changes to the ethics field resulting in more diversity would require regulatory, legal, or accreditation oversight. Absent that, it is going to be one institution at a time, or one or several ethicists at a time, trying to create the right kind of mix of diversity and representation.