Medical Ethics Advisor – March 1, 2010
March 1, 2010
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Technological advances and patient burden: achieving balance
Technological advances in medicine have the capability of helping health care providers to prolong life for patients faced with a terminal illness or injury. -
Tech research: Should U.S. study societal implications?
As medical scientists and engineers in the health care arena pursue advances in drugs and technologies, is now the time to think more critically about these new technologies and how to address future implications for say, the ramifications of genetic screening and designer babies? -
CANCER study: Physicians and EOL discussions
Most physicians reported in a national survey that they would discuss end-of-life options with a terminally ill patient only when there were no more treatments to offer that patient not when the patient was still feeling well, according to a study published online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, in January. -
Apologizing for medical errors: the ethical approach
From a grassroots organization's efforts to make medical error disclosure and apology part of the U.S. health culture to more hospitals and other health care players are beginning to be aware of apology, and it would appear that more organizations agree that offering an institutional "I'm sorry" is the right thing to do. -
Michigan system's approach to medical errors
When the University of Michigan Health System's chief risk officer arrived in 2001, he had already mapped out to institutional leaders an architecture for risk management and medical error disclosure that would dramatically change the system's liability expenses, as well as its approach to patient safety. -
Series helps IRBs wrestle with tough ethical issues
Some of the thorniest questions that IRBs face are those for which there are no clear-cut answers opinions may vary, arguments on both sides may be compelling, regulatory guidance may be scanty. -
News Briefs
A news analysis published in CANCER found that black patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or liver cancer, have worse survival than patients of other races, even after receiving comparable treatments.