Clinicians have ethical and legal obligations to report suspected maltreatment of children. A decision to report suspected abuse is one of great ethical, clinical, and legal importance and can weigh heavily on clinicians who have established relationships with a family….
When health care professionals encounter child abuse and neglect, they can experience a range of emotions, such as anger, sadness, and frustration. Such feelings can cloud judgment, compromise care, or even undermine one’s capacity to complete evaluation of a child….
An aging prison population means more people who are incarcerated will experience dementia and related symptoms (eg, cognitive impairment, behavioral outbursts, poor impulse control). This article canvasses clinical and ethical complexities of caring for people with dementia who are incarcerated…
The nature and scope of palliative psychiatry and associated ethical implications are debated in the literature. This article examines conceptual limitations of extant accounts of palliative psychiatry, with a focus on psychopharmacological practice, and suggests that modifiable and unmodifiable psychiatric…
In 2008, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest filed a civil rights complaint with the New York State Office of the Attorney General on behalf of its client, Bronx Health REACH. This complaint asserts that 3 prestigious New York…
US health care is segregated by insurance status and de facto by race; however, traditional models of medical education do not teach students about segregated care, and the authors know of no examples in the literature teaching segregated care in…
Many police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and parole boards have reformed how their court- or carceral-based work with patients who have mental illness proceeds. This article discusses how policies and protocols have evolved to help court and carceral workers…
Police officers and clinicians are exposed to a broad range of moral risks in the field. When they perceive that a moral transgression has been committed by an agent responding to those risks, they are susceptible to moral injury. This…
A clinician’s standard primary role is to treat and monitor their patients’ health and to be their ally. Clinicians with obligations to patients and to organizations, however, must also assess patients for nontherapeutic purposes (eg, readiness to resume work). These…
Ethical obligations to minimize harms and maximize benefits of diagnosis and treatment of disorders without biomarkers include navigating difficult-to-measure, perhaps clinically inexplicable, symptoms. Among potential harms are public stigma, self-stigma, label avoidance, and the negative influence these stigmas have on…
© 2026
American Board of Medical Specialties | Policies | Sitemap | Terms of Use | www.abms.org
