Medical Ethics
RSSArticles
-
Ethics Issues for Young Adults Vary Depending on Setting
As a medical student at the University of Michigan, Samantha Lyons, MD, HEC-C, regularly attended both pediatric and adult ethics committee meetings. Lyons noticed that for young adults, different approaches were used based on whether the patient presented to the pediatric or adult setting. In general, pediatric care was more family-oriented, whereas adult care placed more emphasis on patients being autonomous and independent.
-
Many Hospital Websites Lack Information on Clinical Ethics Consultation Services
Many patients and family members, and even some clinicians, are unaware of the basics of what ethicists do or even how to contact them. However, many ethics services do not post any information at all on their institutional websites, a recent study found.
-
Anesthesiologists Encounter Unique Ethical Issues
There currently is no standardized ethics curriculum for anesthesiology training programs in the United States. Thus, the ethics education trainees receive varies depending on the institution.
-
Physicians Posting About Devices May Have Undisclosed Financial Conflicts
Most physicians who mention specific devices or companies in social media posts have undisclosed financial conflicts, a recent study found.
-
Physicians May Have Ethical Obligation to Inform Patients if AI Tool Is Used
Did a physician factor in the recommendations of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool when ruling out a diagnosis or deciding whether to order a diagnostic test? If so, the clinician may wonder whether there is an ethical obligation to tell the patient.
-
Ethical Approaches to Obtain High-Quality Crowdsourced Data
Researchers increasingly are using online recruitment (“crowdsourcing”) for studies. Rather than relying on undergraduate panels, such as college freshmen completing studies for credit, or basic convenience sampling using social media posts or flyers in classrooms, platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Prolific allow researchers to post their studies as “jobs” for online workers to complete.
-
QI Initiative Increases Goals of Care Conversations
Many hospitalized patients lack goals of care conversations, causing ethical conflicts at the end of life.
-
Ethical Concerns with Portable MRIs in Research
New portable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies are being developed, allowing study investigators to conduct field-based research in remote settings. The introduction of portable MRI technologies means that new users, some with less experience with MRI research, are using MRI in new locations. There also is increased variation in image resolution. All those factors raise concerns about researchers’ ability to maintain quality control.
-
Ethicists Are Addressing Ableism in Medical Education, Clinical Practice
There is increasing attention to the issue of ableism in healthcare. One concern is that medical education is not doing enough to include the perspectives of people with disabilities.
-
Recent Cases Add to Complexity of Treatment Withdrawal Decision-Making
Many ethics consults involve conflicts over withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. If patients’ families are aware of recent cases demonstrating recovery potential in patients with traumatic brain injury who were thought to have a low chance of survival, it can make the decision-making process even more challenging.