Making decisions within the complexities of modern health care is not easy. This is especially true in a training environment. Ethical dilemmas often present themselves, and having a mechanism available to effectively address complex ethical issues...

The first official healthcare ethics committee convened in 1971. But the origin of such committees came years earlier in response to a rising tide of moral concern in health care. “Committees for the Discussion of Morals in Medicine” were formed...

system. To date an assessment tool measuring ethical behavior in privacy and confidentiality, and guidelines for ensuring fairness in health care coverage decisions, have been produced. The most recent work in progress addresses patient-centered...

Futility, in general, is the inability to achieve an intended goal or outcome. Biomedical futility more specifically is a clinical judgment that, in light of the patient's current clinical circumstance, it is not physiologically ...

as a patient-centered enterprise in spite of the modern influences of expanding technology, the competing market, politics, and the ever pressing press of academic health care institutions to drift from their primary mission of patient care....

In academic medicine we are ruled by many masters—the need to see patients, the expectations of teaching, the desire (and expectation) to advance our careers through scholarship and research, and the ever present specter ...

The practice of medicine requires clinical judgments within the context of an inexact and very complicated science, the end result of which has profound implication for the welfare of patients. The ethical question for the practitioner is whether...

A newly released consensus report by the American Medical Association's Ethical Force Program “Improving Communication—Improving Care” helps health care executives prioritize effective, patient-centered communication and create environments where...

In times of crisis there are opportunities to grow and learn. With the suffering and demise of Terri Shiavo patients, families, and health care providers again find themselves in doubt as to what to do in the midst of very personal and difficult end...

Faith and spirituality, and their place in professional relationships, are getting a great deal of press these days. From an airline pilot proselytizing to his captive passengers at the beginning of a four hour coast to ...

Health illiteracy is a serious and growing problem in this country. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) nearly half of all American adults (that's 90 million people) have difficulty understanding and using health information, and there is a...

fierce debate as to the morality of eliminating health care access for many of the most vulnerable citizens, such as the elderly, dying, and disabled....

Nothing is more important to the welfare of patients, providers, and health care systems than effective patient centered communication. This occurs by having the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and organizational infrastructure to foster...

of the state, many in desperation and from long distances because doors to health care closed to them at home. Yet, they still need health care and our mission is to provide that care to anyone who needs it, regardless of the economic burden. The perception...

Medical ethics is grounded by the notion that we must always respect the patient's right of self determination, which means that we should inform patients about what needs to be done and seek permission before doing it to them. But, what about those...

The ethical controversy invited by legally allowing physician assisted suicide is a familiar and complex one in which personal rights, states' rights, professional obligation, and the federal government's sense of global obligation to protect human...

On March 20, 2004, in a papal allocution delivered at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II made statements regarding the feeding of patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. These statements have rekindled the longstanding ethical...

In 2003 the Institute of Medicine, in Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, reported a consistent body of research demonstrating significant racial variation in the access to and utilization of medical...