Was I right to prescribe an inferior medication to my patient?
(Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)
Should Her Doctor Consider the Cost of Her Care?
Carol Jefferson’s right lung x-ray looked the color of a February storm in Northern Minnesota—a blizzard of white making bone and lung invisible. Her lung was “whited out” because she was experiencing a dangerous combination of tumor and infection…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Can You Trust Your Doctor to Give You the Right Pill?
Susan Holmgren was resting in her hospital bed, a mere 72 hours removed from her first heart attack. She was out of the woods according to her doctors, with her heart having only sustained minor damage. But the next one-the next heart attack-could be worse. Almost 75-years-old now, Holmgren needed to do everything in her power to make sure that her first heart attack would be her last…(Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)
Muslim Nose Jobs and Gossipy Doctors
A scandal is rocking Egypt, now that word has spread that those unsightly bandages on Anwar el-Balkimy’s face weren’t there because he got beaten by a masked gunman but, instead, because he had had (horror of horrors!) plastic surgery—a procedure which many people in the conservative Islamist party that el-Balkimy belongs to considered to be “sinful.”
But the real scandal? His lies were brought to light by the doctors who performed the procedure, physicians who were so aghast at his brazen falsehoods that they unhesitantly violated doctor-patient confidentiality.
In the United States at least, doctors are expected to protect patient confidentiality. Indeed, the ethic of respecting confidentiality goes back at least the time of Hippocrates: “Whatever, in connection with my professional services I see or hear in the life of men which ought not to be spoken of abroad,” Hippocrates wrote, “I will not divulge.”
I guess the key word from that sentence for Egyptian plastic surgeons, is “whatever.”
Why does confidentiality matter?
Because patients won’t come to physicians for the care of sensitive matters if they fear that their diagnoses and treatments will be made public without their consent.
Because good medical decision making often relies upon open, trusting communication between doctors and patients, and gossip (even when it’s true) is not a good way to build trust.
Do el-Balkimy’s lies void this moral duty? Do his falsehoods compel his doctors to speak out?
I guess if his lies maligned the doctors in question, or if they threatened public health or national security, perhaps a higher duty would prevail. But from what I have read about this case, no such higher duties existed.
El-Balkimy’s doctors should have shut the heck up.
Discussing Life Expectancy With Older Patients
In a recent post, I laid out a question to readers — about whether and how physicians should discuss the prognosis among patients whose shortened life expectancy is the result of their already long lives…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Do You Want Your Doctor to Tell You When You’re Going to Die?
Paul Kostick’s DNA was under attack and his fate was sealed. Forces beyond his control were hacking large pieces of genetic material off the ends of his chromosomes. Should his doctor tell him how long he has to live?
(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Thought of the Day: Can someone stop Gail Collins from making "dog on the roof" jokes, please!
Is it possible for Gail Collins, New York Times op-ed columnist, to write an article about Mitt Romney without making a joke about him, as she describes it, “strapping his dog to the roof of his car”?
Collins says the detail is a telling one and that it brings levity to her columns, part of her effort to write about politics in a way that doesn’t cause people “to want to throw themselves out the nearest window.”
But repeating the same joke every time you write about a person—that won’t make people want to jump out a window? Her increasingly heavy-handed efforts to repeat this joke fail both as humor and political commentary, coming off as an awkward obsession and distracting readers from any serious points Collins hopes to make.
Dude, I totally get that serious points can be made—heck, should be made—with a touch of humor once in a while. But by the fiftieth dog reference, I’m afraid the humor is long gone.
Collins is unabashed about her repetitiveness, considering it a challenge to find a way to squeeze a dog reference into each column. From what I’ve read, she’s not up to the challenge. Her dog references typically look like they were inserted by a computer program written by a fourteen-year-old, that inserts the awkward joke into random portions of any sentence within twenty characters of the word “Romney.”
I have been fortunate to have one essay accepted in the New York Times op-ed page, a few hundred words that were scrutinized line by line by a very attentive editor. Do the regular New York Times columnists not get similar treatment?
Talking Money With Your Doctor
In a recent post, I asked whether you think doctors should routinely discuss the costs of medical interventions with their patients before exposing these patients to large out-of-pocket expenses. According to the responses I have gotten on websites and by email, most of you think the answer is “yes.”
(Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)