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  • Increasing burden on family caregivers: Ethical concerns

    Almost half of family caregivers perform nursing and medical tasks for family members with chronic physical and cognitive conditions, often without any training, in large part because hospitals are discharging very sick patients more quickly, according to a September 2012 report released by the AARP Public Policy Institute and the United Hospital Fund.
  • Sandy response points to possible bigger role for ethics during disasters

    There is nothing like a mandatory hospital evacuation to underscore the importance of including ethics in emergency preparedness, according to Kenneth W. Goodman, PhD, professor and director of the Bioethics Program at University of Miami (FL).
  • Act ethically when ending patient-physician relationship

    Is a physician unable to exercise reasonable objectivity in providing care, or does the physician lack the requisite skill or training to help the patient?
  • Surprising reasons for continuing futile treatment

    The reasons for providers continuing futile life-sustaining treatment are primarily emotional, such as guilt, grief, fear of legal consequences, and concerns about the family's reaction, according to a recent study which surveyed intensive care unit (ICU) and palliative care clinicians.
  • Diagnostic neuroimaging for psych patients — ethical?

    Does a psychiatrist offer diagnostic neuroimaging to their patients and claim to diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders using the results?
  • Ethical responses needed for inappropriate requests

    When a friend or acquaintance asks for informal medical advice, Steven Brown, MD, a clinical associate professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, gives this standard reply: "I would be doing you a great disservice by pretending that I could give you good medical advice outside the context of a thorough review of your full medical history and an appropriate physical examination."
  • Melanoma misdiagnosis brings ethical pitfalls

    There are multiple ethical and legal considerations involved with the misdiagnosis of a melanoma, according to a recently published commentary.
  • ACA ruling is ethical landmark: Health care is

    The most important ethical implication of the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act is "the recognized national responsibility to provide medical care for all citizens," according to Neil S. Wenger, MD, MPH, director of the University of California--Los Angeles (UCLA) Health System Ethics Center and professor at UCLA's Division of General Internal Medicine.
  • "Difficult trade-off" with research regs

    The goal of proposed reforms in regulations governing human research subjects is to enhance protections for research subjects while reducing burden, delay, and ambiguity for investigators, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Science Policy, which received more than 1,000 public comments on the proposed changes.
  • Placebos: What place do they have in medicine?

    There are several ethical questions surrounding the American Medical Association's policy prohibiting physicians from giving substances they believe are placebos to their patients unless the patient is informed of and agrees to use of the substance, according to a 2012 report from the Hastings Center.