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.

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.

1;Ethical Problems in Emergency Medicine;31.1;Contents;71.2;Contributors;111.3;Preface;151.4;Section One: Challenging professionalism;171.4.1;1: Physician care of family, friends, or colleagues;191.4.2;2: The impaired physician;311.4.3;3: Disclosure of medical error and truth telling;431.4.4;4: Conflicts between patient requests and physician obligations;531.4.5;5: Judgmental attitudes and opinions in the emergency department;631.4.6;6: Using physicians as agents of the state;731.5;Section Two: End-of-life decisions;831.5.1;7: Family-witnessed resuscitation in the emergency department: making sense of ethical and practical considerations in an emotional debate;851.5.2;8: Palliative care in the emergency department;951.5.3;9: Refusal of life-saving therapy;1051.5.4;10: Revisiting comfort-directed therapies: death and dying in the emergency department, including withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment;1151.5.5;11: Futility in emergency medicine;1331.6;Section Three: Representing vulnerable populations;1431.6.1;12: The care of minors in the emergency department;1451.6.2;13: Chemical restraints, physical restraints, and other demonstrations of force;1551.6.3;14: Capacity determination in the patient with altered mental status;1651.6.4;15: Obstetric emergency: perimortem cesarean section;1731.7;Section Four: Outside influence and observation;1831.7.1;16: Non-medical observers in the emergency department;1851.7.2;17: Religious perspectives on do-notresuscitate (DNR) documents and the dying patient;1951.7.3;18: Non-physician influence on the scope and responsibilities of emergency physicians;2031.7.4;19: Privacy and confidentiality: particular challenges in the emergency department;2131.8;Section Five: Emergency medicine outside the emergency department;2231.8.1;20: Short-term international medical initiatives;2251.8.2;21: Disaster triage;2371.8.3;22: The emergency physician as a bystander outside the hospital;2531.8.4;23: Military objectives versus patient interests;2631.9;Section Six: Public health as emergency medicine;2751.9.1;24: Treatment of potential organ donors;2771.9.2;25: Mandatory and permissive reporting laws: conflicts in patient confidentiality, autonomy, and the duty to report;2871.9.3;26: Ethics of care during a pandemic;3031.10;Section Seven: Education and research;3151.10.1;27: Practicing medical procedures on the newly or nearly dead;3171.10.2;28: Ethics of research without informed consent;3271.11;Appendix: useful resources;3371.12;Index;341