February 9, 2010
The Doctor Will Never See You Again
When is it appropriate for doctors to “fire” patients? Patients can and often do leave doctors they don’t see eye to eye with, find inconvenient or can’t afford. But doctors must follow strict ethical rules when they want to dismiss a patient… Michael Bannon, a general surgeon and chairman of the ethics subcommittee at […]
Tags: "fire" patients, Ethics
October 26, 2009
Conscience clauses not just about abortion anymore
Faced with a request to give an unmarried female patient a prescription for birth control pills, Dr. Michele Phillips looked to her conscience for the answer. “I’m not going to give any kind of medication I see as harmful,” said Phillips of San Antonio. The drugs would not protect her patient from “emotional trauma […]
Tags: Ethics
October 8, 2009
Life and death: Hospital ethics panels help families decide
An infant is born with no functioning brain. A teen is ravaged in a car wreck. A 90-year-old with dementia and pneumonia lies unconscious in intensive care… Every day, in a hospital somewhere in the USA, a group of strangers — the hospital ethics committee — is called in to help people make the […]
Tags: Ethics, life and death