Medical Ethics Advisor – April 1, 2017
April 1, 2017
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Surrogate Decision-makers Face Ethical Questions If Patient Has Dementia
Even when the prior wishes of a patient with dementia were known, the process of decision-making was often fraught with complexity, found a recent study.
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ED-Initiated Palliative Care Yields Dramatic Cost Savings
ED-initiated palliative care consults have the potential to decrease costs and length of stay, found a recent study.
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ICU Strain Speeds Timing to Withdrawal of Life-sustaining Therapy
During busy periods in the ICU, decision-making regarding withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy is made more quickly, found a recent study. Researchers analyzed the effect of ICU capacity strain on 9,891 patients dying in the hospital.
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Pediatric End-Of-Life Care: An ‘Additional Layer Of Complexity’
Ethicists can encourage clinicians to consider language used to communicate with parents and ask about the family’s values to ensure ethical pediatric end-of-life care.
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Big Data in Healthcare: Privacy Is Major Ethical Concern
Healthcare privacy is a central ethical concern involving the use of big data in healthcare, with vast amounts of personal information widely accessible electronically.
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Ethical Responses if Clinician Is Asked to Help Law Enforcement
When emergency medicine clinicians are caring for a patient in the custody of law enforcement, multiple ethical issues must be considered.
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Overly Strict Criteria For Clinical Trials Is Ethical Problem
Clinical trials routinely use overly strict enrollment criteria, found a recent study.
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Study: Ethics Consults Happen Earlier If Patient Is Female
Clinical ethicists at Springfield, IL-based Memorial Medical Center suspected that ethics consultations about limiting treatment were being requested earlier in patients’ hospital stays for African-Americans than for other patients.
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Health Equity Study Finds ‘Fundamental Lack Of Fairness’
The burdens of disease and the benefits of good health are inequitably distributed in the U.S. due to factors that range from poverty and inadequate housing to structural racism and discrimination, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.