AMA Code Research Articles

Have Arguments For and Against Medical Aid in Dying Stood the Test of Time?

Have Arguments For and Against Medical Aid in Dying Stood the Test of Time?

Parental Rights Laws and the Impact on Mental Health Services and Counseling for Adolescents.

Parental Rights Laws and the Impact on Mental Health Services and Counseling for Adolescents.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ Opinions Related to Meat and Health

Meat consumption and production produce a wide range of health and social consequences. The AMA Code of Medical Ethics and Principles of Medical Ethics do not speak directly to the issue of meat consumption. However

AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ Opinions Related to Health Care Waste

This article examines how the AMA Code of Medical Ethics addresses different kinds of waste generated by health care delivery streams. This summary considers AMA Code opinions about advocacy and access that can guide clinicians’ and health care organizations’ disposal and stewardship duties to patients and communities

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Palliative Surgical Care.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on the significance of palliative surgical care in Opinion 5.6, "Sedation to Unconsciousness in End-of-Life Care," and Opinion 5.5, "Medically Ineffective Interventions." The American Medical Association's House of Delegates policies further outline ways in which physicians should navigate palliative care intervention through spreading awareness of and advancing research on palliative care and improving reimbursement practices. This article defines palliative care, examines the risks associated with palliative surgery, and discusses AMA Code guidance.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Implantable Devices.

Many US patients will have an implantable device during their lives. The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance for weighing need for patient-subjects' safety against health care sector demand for innovation.

Structural Justice Ethics in Health Care

Structural Justice Ethics in Health Care

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to "Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America".

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on HIV screening that respects patient autonomy and protects public health in Opinion 8.1, "Routine Universal Screening for HIV." This article examines the relationship between this opinion and the Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America initiative and discusses the Code's guidance on the role that physicians can play in diagnosing and treating patients with HIV and mitigating the stigma surrounding the disease.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to the Legacies of the Holocaust in Health Care.

Two concerns about information from unethical experimentation are its legitimacy and trustworthiness. This article explores guidance about information use from the AMA Code of Medical Ethics.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Risk Management Ethics.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on ethical issues pertaining to risks involving patient discharge, which provides an example of how the Code might pertain to issues in risk management. This article presents one example case regarding patient discharge and how the Code might be applied in such a scenario to help guide physicians in ethically discharging a patient while also managing associated risks.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions About End-of-Life Care and Death.

Death determination is fraught with clinical, cultural, and ethics questions. This article considers relevant history that informs the AMA Code of Medical Ethics opinions about neurological criteria for death.

Toward a unified health work ethics code

Summary The ethics code of the American Medical Association (AMA, 2017) includes nine principles. The organization was initiated over 150 years ago, and the ethics code has gone through multiple revisions since it first was written in the 1950s. The list of principles could be improved in its content and organization. The present work suggests how a proposed universal mental health ethics code (Young, 2017) can be adapted as a superordinate structure to the nine principles in the AMA Ethics code to give it a theoretical base, to organize better its principles, and to suggest principles that should be added to it. In addition, Young (2017) had proposed that the AMA ethics code's list of patient rights could be adapted for the universal mental health ethics code that he had proposed. This work elaborates that recommendation, and constructs a universal patient rights document while writing it in a way general enough to apply to any professional-contact relationship, patient or otherwise. The work also focuses on the opinions (which are standards) in the AMA code, suggesting ways they can be re-organized according to the general structure of domains that Young (2017) had created for the groups of standards in the American Psychological Association (APA) ethics code. In short, the present work suggests new principles and opinions (standards) for the AMA ethics code, and a new patient/contactee list of rights for it, while suggesting a new structure for them.

The healthcare worker at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic: a Jewish ethical perspective

The current COVID-19 pandemic has raised many questions and dilemmas for modern day ethicists and healthcare providers. Are physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers morally obligated to put themselves in...

AMA Policies and Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Cancer Prevention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally. Death rates from cancer reflect global inequality; approximately 70% of deaths from cancers occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Due to high costs of cancer treatment and limited access to resources, these countries are unable to use treatment as a primary means for reducing cancer burden. Thus, redirecting focus from treatment to prevention in LMICs and considering prevention as a global public health imperative are critical. The AMA Code of Medical Ethics and policies can guide efforts to promote and support cancer prevention in LMICs.

AMA Policies and Code of Medical Ethics� Opinions Related to Human Genome Editing

Recent research using gene editing technologies has made such tools more accessible and easier to use, fueling the promise of their therapeutic capacity. However, development of gene editing tools reminds professionals and the public that these technologies' potential use extends beyond treating somatic disease to germline editing, with consequences yet unknown. This article canvasses AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinions and policies relevant to gene editing.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Prescription Drugs.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on topics related to prescription drugs, including access, stewardship, and professionalism.

AMA: Ethics Code Supports Opponents, Proponents of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ProfessionalFull AccessAMA: Ethics Code Supports Opponents, Proponents of Physician-Assisted SuicideMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:15 Jul 2019https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2019.7b16AbstractThe report on physician-assisted suicide approved by the House of Delegates was the third effort by CEJA, which often deliberates about some of the most contentious and difficult issues in medicine.The AMA Code of Medical Ethics supports physicians who oppose as well as support physician-assisted suicide, according to a report by the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA).The report, which addresses one of the most divisive issues in contemporary medicine, was adopted by the House of Delegates at its Annual Meeting last month in Chicago by a vote of 360-190.The council recommended no change to the Code of Medical Ethics as currently written. Opinion E-5.7 of the code states, “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” Yet the council also found that the so-called “conscience code,” expressed in Opinion 1.1.7, provides support to physicians who choose to participate in physician-assisted death in jurisdictions where it is legal. That opinion states: “Preserving opportunity for physicians to act (or to refrain from acting) in accordance with the dictates of conscience in their professional practice is important for preserving the integrity of the medical profession as well as the integrity of the individual physician, on which patients and the public rely. Thus, physicians should have considerable latitude to practice in accord with well-considered, deeply held beliefs that are central to their self-identities.”(Opinions within the code are deliberated by the council as issues emerge and reviewed by the House of Delegates.)Crafting a report that offered ethical guidance on such a divisive issue was a difficult needle to thread. While the report was the third iteration of CEJA’s effort, it differed little from the one that the House sent back to the council last year.Importantly, CEJA emphasized that physicians approach the issue of physician-assisted suicide with “irreducible differences of opinion.” The report stated: “While supporters and opponents of physician-assisted suicide share a common commitment to ‘compassion and respect for human dignity and rights,’ they draw different moral conclusions from the underlying principle they share.”Even the name given to the practice is contentious, with proponents insisting that patients with terminal illness seeking to end their lives with medical assistance should not be conflated with individuals who are suicidal when they have years of life yet to live.“The council recognizes that choosing one term of art over others can carry multiple, and not always intended, messages,” the report stated. “However, in the absence of a perfect option, CEJA believes ethical deliberation and debate are best served by using plainly descriptive language. In the council’s view, despite its negative connotations, the term ‘physician-assisted suicide’ describes the practice with the greatest precision. Most importantly, it clearly distinguishes the practice from euthanasia. The terms ‘aid in dying’ or ‘death with dignity’ could be used to describe either euthanasia or palliative/hospice care at the end of life, and this degree of ambiguity is unacceptable for providing ethical guidance.”The subject of physician-assisted suicide/death has become important for psychiatrists who may be called upon to perform competency assessments (Psychiatric News) for patients seeking assisted death.This year’s report was endorsed in the House by several past AMA presidents, and a majority of physicians in the House appeared to recognize that the CEJA report was a judicious expression of ethical opinion on a topic that raises the most fundamental questions of what it means to be a doctor.“When a physician prescribes a lethal dose of drug to a patient in full knowledge of the express wish of that patient to take that dose in order to end [his or her] life, we are all faced with a moral dilemma,” said Jeff White, M.D., an internist from Louisiana. “CEJA has done our profession a great service by not running away from that dilemma, but it has done an even greater service by recognizing that physicians hold divergent moral convictions as to the rightness or wrongness of that act and that a physician may act in a proper exercise of conscience if the physician chooses this act in a jurisdiction where the greater society has legalized it.“The report is a wise and just compromise,” White said. ■The CEJA report is posted here. Three articles in Psychiatric News that examine this subject are posted here, here, and here. ISSUES NewArchived

Direct-to-consumer advertising for robotic surgery.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is described as the promotion or marketing of a product directly from the seller to the consumer. We examined whether websites on Google™ provided clinical data or referenced peer-reviewed publications as part of their advertising in relation to the urological procedures. We created an electronic database for clinical direct-to-consumer advantages and/or disadvantages using the search terms "robotic sacrocolpopexy", "robotic prostatectomy", "robotic nephrectomy" and "robotic cystectomy" on the first 3 pages of Google™. Advertising was then classified based on presentation of: advantages only, disadvantages only, and both advantages and disadvantages. We further classified the information based on whether peer-reviewed references were present on the webpages and the type of Google webpage. A total of 25 websites were found to have information on advantages and disadvantages of robotic sacrocolpopexy. Most of these websites with advantages only provided references for their claims (n = 29%), while 71% of websites with both advantages and disadvantages provided references. When reviewing the content on the websites with advantages only, we found the following most common advantages: shorter recovery time, decreased blood loss, and less pain. We found the results to be nearly identical for each procedure. Direct-to-consumer advertising is common among robotic surgery. There is significant bias promoted on the benefit of robotic surgery regardless of the web-based source of information. The AMA Ethics Committee suggests that we need to further elucidate the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising on patient health and medical care. Websites should follow the AMA code to present balanced information to better inform patients about expectations.

AMA Policies and Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Health Promotion and Community Development.

Physicians play important roles in community development. They seek not only to increase patients' overall well-being and the quality of care in clinical settings, but also to engage communities in health promotion and public health efforts. The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance to physicians developing community health initiatives, especially regarding health promotion, community development, and rural health care access.

AMA Policies and Code of Medical Ethics' Opinions Related to Health Care for Patients Who Are Immigrants, Refugees, or Asylees.

Accessing health care resources in the United States often proves to be a difficult task for vulnerable populations. Immigrants, in particular, face barriers and difficulties in obtaining continuous medical care, which negatively impacts both patients and clinicians. The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on how physicians and health care systems can best support undocumented and lawfully present immigrants alike to promote the best possible care for all who need it.