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Patient flow and boarding have been recognized for some time as problems that hospitals need to address.
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In a concerted effort to improve patient care, payers and providers are collaborating to improve transitions of care and reduce read-missions.
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Good medication reconciliation is like the Holy Grail in healthcare. If only we could make sure that the old, sick, frail patients understand what they need to take, when and why, we could keep them from bouncing back to the hospital.
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Clinicians often under-utilize clinical ethics consults because they believe these to be unhelpful and time-consuming, but bioethicists can counter these misperceptions with education and by building relationships in clinical areas.
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A court recently ordered that two pediatric patients with cystic fibrosis be allowed to compete on an equal basis with adults for lungs from adult donors, but transplant experts say judicial intervention risks disrupting a system based on public trust.
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Mandatory influenza vaccinations for health care workers can be ethically justified because the vaccine is reasonablysafe andeffective, voluntary participation has failed, and many people will be harmed if it does not occur, according to bioethicists.
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Many ethical considerations will be examined with The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative, including privacy, moral responsibility for one's actions, stigmatization and discrimination, and ensuring protection of vulnerable populations.
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Bioethicists can help clinicians who suspect a colleague may be impaired by giving advice on how to proceed and assisting in creating a confidential process.
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Bioethicists disagreed with the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections' position that a large multisite clinical trial failed to obtain proper consent from the parents of enrolled infants.
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The need to reduce, avoid, or not to adopt costly treatments which provide very small benefits, and the need to provide everyone with treatments that are very effective and reasonably priced, present ethical challenges.
