Medical Ethics Advisor
RSSArticles
-
Ongoing Ethical Concerns with Misleading Advertising by Cancer Centers
Recent guidance outlines ethical concerns when cancer centers advertise directly to the public. The authors recommend these centers ensure fair and balanced promotion of cancer services, avoid exaggeration of claims, and provide data and statistics to support direct and implied assertions of treatment success.
-
Ethics Services Want to Know How Consult Data Compare to Other Hospitals
Ethics services often struggle to obtain data to improve the quality of consults even at their own hospitals, let alone outside institutions. Yet some ethicists are forging ahead with this challenging proposition, trying to move from the qualitative to the quantitative.
-
Patients, Families Viewing Ethics Consult Notes in Real Time
In reading ethics notes, clinicians often glean insights on how the ethics service contributes to patient care. Patients, along with their surrogates and proxies, will be able to learn from such consultations. For some ethicists, this may be a good time to reassess the goals of ethics notes.
-
Quality of Life Important to ICU Patients, But Clinicians Lack Data
This underscores how clinicians must start keeping track of these outcomes to improve their ability to predict them and provide patients and families with information they want.
-
Video Facilitates Informed Consent for ICU Procedures
Audiovisual modules may improve knowledge and comprehension of ICU procedures, according to the results of a study of critically ill surgical patients and their legally authorized representatives.
-
Community-Led Research Bolstered by Access to Big Data
The next step is to determine the logistics of how to empower communities with the tools they need to ask and answer their own research questions.
-
Evolving Ethics of ‘Right to Try’ Unproven Drugs
Ethical concerns persist regarding seriously ill patients who want the chance to try unproven, unapproved drugs.
-
Ethical Concerns if Clinical Trial Results Go Unreported
Study participants believe investigators are conducting their research to promote the public good and scientific advancement. But leaving trial data unpublished creates its own kind of bias, possibly harming the public.
-
Palliative Care Encounters Ethical Conflicts: Consistent Communication Is Key
Palliative care specialists encounter a wide range of ethical challenges in their day-to-day practice, such as navigating institutional policies, interprofessional conflicts, and resource allocation.
-
Consultants Need Preparation for Common Ethics Challenges
Shadowing experienced ethics consultants and participating in debriefings after consults with other members of the ethics team are top priorities for ethics training.