Emergency medicine clinics of North America
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Different types of advance directives invite varying interpretation from emergency care professionals. As informed consent of a patient is not always possible to procure in emergency situations, advance directives can provide useful guidelines for clinicians' decision-making processes regarding individual patient care. Specifically communicated instructions establish a course of aggressive or nonaggressive treatment, while general wishes leave the emergency department physician to assume an innate understanding of individual patients while undertaking an active role in decision-making for that patient's care. This article explores the relationship between advance care directives and the emergency department.
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Ethics is the application of values and moral rules to human activities. Bioethics is a subsection of ethics, actually a part of applied ethics, that uses ethical principles and decision making to solve actual or anticipated dilemmas in medicine and biology. This article focuses on the primary principles of biomedical ethics and their implications for physicians in the ED.
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The elderly consume medical services in an amount disproportionate to their number. Disability and dementia are commonly underdiagnosed and misunderstood in any emergency department setting. Educating emergency physicians regarding the evaluation of dementia, disability, and abuse is crucial to appropriate management and optimal outcome of these clinical problems.
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The integration of an honor code in medical school curricula might be a means to enhance the moral education of medical students. In recent years, the subject of medical ethics has seen a rebirth; not only is the literature replete with material but the training of physicians is centered in no small way upon the inculcation of a core set of values that will accompany students throughout their careers. However, medical ethics as currently taught remains abstract and, often, intangible for young physicians in training. This article will address the means by which the use of an honor code in modern medical schooling might foster a more virtuous and ethical individual and, in turn, physician.
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Good Samaritan Acts are those in which aid is rendered to a needy victim of injury or sudden illness. No antecedent relationship exists with the good samaritan, and no remuneration is anticipated. Emergency physicians have an ethical obligation beyond that of other citizens to provide aid in such situations of medical need; professional and legal standards support that obligation.