Medical Ethics
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Changing Practice Models in Healthcare Raise Some Ethical Concerns
With all the ongoing changes in healthcare, such as physician contract clauses, new regulatory requirements, private equity ownership, and physician leadership, hospitals worry about the implications on revenue, patient satisfaction, and compliance. There also are important ethical considerations. The authors of a new policy paper from the American College of Physicians examined these.
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Policies Support Clinicians if Asked to Provide Inappropriate Care
When a family demands possibly inappropriate life-sustaining interventions, clinicians often turn to hospital policies for guidance. The authors of a recent study examined the effectiveness of Yale New Haven Hospital’s Conscientious Practice Policy. A theme emerged, focused on the inconsistent use of the policy. Whether it was used depended mostly on how resistant the family was to limiting interventions.
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United Kingdom Begins First COVID-19 Human Challenge Study
Lawmakers, academics, and the research community have hotly debated the ethics of a human challenge study since the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the United Kingdom has started dosing patients in its human challenge study, some bioethicists say this trial can show vaccine efficacy in ways the larger vaccine trials cannot.
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Study of COVID-19 Vaccine in Pregnant People ‘Too Late’
On Feb. 18, Pfizer and BioNTech announced they would dose about 4,000 healthy pregnant women with the COVID-19 vaccine to evaluate its safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity. Although pregnant people were excluded initially from the COVD-19 trials, research has shown they are at higher risk for more severe disease.
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Biden Administration Abandons ‘Public Charge’ Rule
Under Trump era proposal, immigrants who received public benefits, including Medicaid, above a certain level would be considered a “public charge.”
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Unanticipated Ethical Issues Arise When Data Are Collected and Analyzed
Discussions about ethical concerns led to the development of a checklist to raise awareness of issues that arise in daily work.
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The Joint Commission Sets Specific Ethical Expectations
Leadership is expected to establish an ethical framework on which all operations, policies, procedures, and services are based, and in a manner that supports the delivery of safe, quality care, treatment, and services.
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Lack of Metrics, Specificity, and Regulations Concern Some Ethics Services
To some, there is a perception that regulatory agencies still consider ethics a small-volume service handled by a volunteer committee instead of a critical, high-volume service run by paid ethics staff. A few professionals in the trenches believe this critical subject is taken too lightly.
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Healthcare Professionals Should Complete Their Own Advance Care Planning Directives
If providers manage their own plans, they can share firsthand insights. They will be in a better position to inform, guide, and support their patients. It will make them a more effective, trusted, and knowledgeable resource.
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Ethics Services Taking First Steps Toward Preventive Work
Preventive ethics work, aimed at topics of high institutional concern, shows how ethicists can not only comment on issues but also sometimes prevent them from occurring.