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Most IRB directors or chairs can recount stories about their tensions with investigators. All boards must balance the institution's need to protect subjects with investigators' concerns about unduly hampering their research.
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In general, patients think of a screening test as a good thing, says Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, NY. "Patients aapproach this thinking that it is better to test than not test, and doctors have to be aware of that bias," he says.
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Is there clear and convincing evidence that an individual has no pain that would justify a prescription analgesic and is, therefore, seeking medication solely because of an addictive disorder, recreational use, or with the intent of diverting it to others?
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If a provider tells patients they might have been exposed to a blood-borne pathogen when they actually weren't, then the patients worried needlessly when there was no actual health risk.
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Access to the electronic health record (EHR) of an individual patient as well as what the person looking at the record does with that information remain concerns for all professionals and institutions involved in patient care.
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At the start of leading an 18-month pilot project to explore organ donation for patients who died in the emergency department (ED) at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Clifton W. Callaway, MD, believed the team was "creating, in reality, what the general public already thought existed."
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Closely tracking infections among health care workers helps Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, detect clusters and prevent further infections.
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In a directive for compliance officers, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration lays out the key areas of an ergonomics program for health care employers. This is what inspectors will look for:
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Measles cases rose to their highest level in 15 years in 2011, yet another reminder to be on guard for the highly transmissible disease, public health authorities say.
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Eleven years after Congress rescinded the ergonomics standard, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is preparing to wield its "general duty clause" powers to identify ergonomic hazards in health care.