American family physician
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Family physicians provide a significant amount of mental health care in the form of psychotropic medication and supportive psychotherapy. Providers of primary psychiatric care face a number of legal dangers and ethical pitfalls. Most often, these derive from negligent diagnosis or treatment, failure to prevent suicide and exploitation of the patient. By adhering to sound clinical guidelines and ethical principles, physicians can both protect themselves and provide better care for their patients.
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Even when simple iron deficiency is strongly suspected, the child with severe anemia deserves a careful and thorough work-up before treatment is begun. Many other possible causes of anemia need to be excluded. No one test specifically identifies iron deficiency, but the combined use of several tests of iron status can establish iron deficiency with certainty. Hemoglobin level, mean corpuscular volume, serum iron, total iron binding capacity, free erythrocyte porphyrin and serum ferritin are the important studies.