Medical Ethics Advisor – December 1, 2024

Ethics Consult Requestors Validate Value of Ethicists, Voice Concerns About Access

What is the value of an ethics consultation? Clinical areas rely on hard data, such as an increase in the percentage of patients receiving medication in a specific timeframe, to demonstrate quality. For ethics, a “good” consult is much harder to define and is talked about in terms of qualitative, rather than quantitative, data.

Pediatric Ethics Consults Differ in the Outpatient vs. Inpatient Setting

When consulting on pediatric cases in the outpatient setting, ethicists see distinct issues compared to the inpatient setting, a recent study found.

Physician Selling Practice? Ethical Guidance Is Needed

As healthcare in America continues to consolidate, private independent practices or solo practitioners are fewer in number. A growing number of physicians are selling their practices to private equity firms or other buyers, raising ethical concerns.

Rise of Private Equity Raises Ethical Conflicts in Emergency Medicine

In emergency medicine, there are growing ethical concerns that the role of private equity firms is putting profits above patient care.

Unique Ethical Concerns with AI-Enabled Cardiovascular Care

Multiple artificial intelligence (AI) -based cardiovascular devices are currently being developed and evaluated. In a recent study, researchers sought to identify specific barriers and facilitators to trustworthy and ethical use of AI in cardiovascular care.

Ethical Considerations for Validating AI Tools in Clinical Trials

With the growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into healthcare, there is a need to validate AI applications through rigorous clinical trials.

Ethics Expertise Needed for Validation of AI Tools

Shaun Grannis, MD, MS, vice president for data and analytics at Regenstrief Institute and a professor of family medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, speaks with Medical Ethics Advisor about ethical issues involved with evaluating artificial intelligence tools.

Facilitated Ethics Conversations Are Tools to Address Moral Distress

Ethicists often help nurses and other clinicians to identify and address moral distress during ethics consults. However, ethicists struggle to identify the most effective approaches. Lucia Wocial, PhD, FAAN, RN, HEC-C, and colleagues conducted a study to determine the effect of a two-phased moral stress intervention.

Ethical Concerns with Data Sharing Practices of Healthcare Organizations

It is not uncommon for hospitals to share patient data with technology companies, either to spur research and product development or to train artificial intelligence models designed to improve clinical decision making. Researchers interviewed and surveyed 24 informatics leaders about current data sharing practices at their institutions.