Ethical Problems in Emergency Medicine A Discussion-based Review [Paperback]

This book is designed to consolidate the relevant literature as well as the thoughts of professionals currently working in the field into a practical and accessible reference for the emergency medical technician, student, nurse, resident, and attending emergency physician. Each chapter is divided into four sections: case presentation, discussion, review of the current literature, and recommendations. Designed to serve simultaneously as a learning and reference tool, each chapter begins with a real case that was encountered in an ED setting. The case presentation is followed by a short discussion of the case, as if at a morbidity and mortality conference, by a panel of experienced attending physicians explaining how they would approach the ethical dilemmas associated with the case, and a review of the existing literature.

Contributors, ix

Preface, xiii

Section One: Challenging professionalism

1 Physician care of family, friends, or colleagues, 3
Taku Taira, Joel Martin Geiderman

2 The impaired physician, 15
Peter Moffett, Christopher Kang

3 Disclosure of medical error and truth telling, 27
Abhi Mehrotra, Cherri Hobgood

4 Conflicts between patient requests and physician obligations, 37
Shellie L. Asher

5 Judgmental attitudes and opinions in the emergency department, 47
V. Ramana Feeser

6 Using physicians as agents of the state, 57
Jeremy R. Simon

Section Two: End-of-life decisions

7 Family-witnessed resuscitation in the emergency department: making sense of ethical and practical considerations in an emotional debate, 69
Kirsten G. Enló0