Emergency medicine clinics of North America
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Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · May 1999
Review Case ReportsInformed consent in the emergency department.
This article reviews the doctrine of informed consent to treatment, with particular attention to its role in the emergency department. The article begins with a brief look at the moral and legal foundations of informed consent. The article then examines the three essential features of informed consent, patient capacity, disclosure of information, and voluntariness. After a review of five exceptions to the duty to obtain informed consent, the article concludes with a brief summary of issues of special significance for emergency physicians.
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At its root, medical professionalism is service delivered according to patient's interest. It is essential to reinforce this notion because financial pressures threaten the integrity of the patient-physician relationship. Excessive commercialism directly contrasts the ideals of medical professionalism. ⋯ If historical standards of professionalism give way to market-driven incentives, the provision of medical care will become a commodity and the practitioners will be only agents of service delivery. Such a model not only threatens the the physician's identity, but also threatens the patient's interests. Medicine can never succeed as a transaction; it can only succeed as a partnership, a trusting exchange with patients, which is the hallmark of professionalism.
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Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · May 1999
Review Case ReportsEmergency department treatment of minors.
This article discusses the practical application of ethical issues in the ED treatment of minors, beginning with a brief discussion of basic principles (including differences between adults and minors), and issues of consent and confidentiality. The remainder of the article focuses on case studies that explore the topics of drug and alcohol screening, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and sexual assault.
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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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Conflicts of interest have become prevalent in the daily practice of emergency medicine because physician relationships with patients, hospitals, insurers, and the medical industry have become increasingly complex. Conflict resolution requires both physician recognition and available resources to avoid engaging in a conflict that may jeopardize public confidence regarding patient advocacy. This article analyzes the essential characteristics of several conflicts of interest that apply to emergency physicians, and reviews rational ways to systematically avoid or curtail them.