Medical Ethics Advisor
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Impossible-to-comprehend Forms ‘Make a Sham of Informed Consent’
Long sentences, large paragraphs, technical language, and multisyllabic words all contribute to reading and comprehension difficulties for informed consent forms, found a recent study.
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Very Few Patients Address ICDs in Advance Care Planning
Some clinicians and patients view deactivation of implantable cardiac devices as morally different from the withdrawal of other life-sustaining interventions, yet very few people address this in advance care planning.
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Are Hospital Billing Practices Unethical? Chargemaster Still Used To Boost Revenue
U.S. hospitals still are using chargemaster markups to maximize revenues, found a recent study.
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New Report on Research Integrity: Institutions Also Play a Role
Institutions and environments — not only individual researchers — play an important role in supporting scientific integrity, stresses a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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Study: Research on Dying ICU Patients Is Ethically Feasible
Research on critically ill, dying ICU patients is ethically feasible, found a recent study which achieved a 95% consent rate for approached families.
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Study Sheds Light on Surrogates’ Decision-making
It comes as no surprise to anyone with experience caring for patients at the end of life that family members often have difficulty predicting a patient’s desire for life-sustaining treatments. Reasons for this are less well-understood, however.
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It’s Not Just MDs: Patient Advocacy Organizations Have Industry Ties, Too
Recent studies have revealed surprising financial ties of patient advocacy organizations: the vast majority receive financial support from drug, device, and biotechnology companies.
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Research Misconduct Rarely Reported by Authors of Systematic Reviews
Research misconduct — not publishing completed research, duplicate publications, or selective reporting of outcomes — sometimes is identified by authors of systematic reviews, but is rarely reported, found a recent study.
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NIH Policy on Review of Multicenter Studies: ‘One Size Fits All’
A new National Institutes of Health policy mandates that all domestic sites participating in multicenter research studies use a single institutional review board.
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Updated Common Rule: ‘Massive Improvement’ For Human Subjects Research
The long-awaited updated Common Rule for federal regulations for ethical conduct of human subjects research is quite different from what was initially proposed.