Active Shooter- Ethics for Healthcare Professionals
Impaired Doctors – Five Tips From the ACP
Helping impaired physicians is part of our profession’s self-regulatory duty. The goal is to ensure patient safety, help physicians get help, and restore them to practice whenever possible.
Ethics Week – COI and Stroke Guidelines
There is some concern for financial conflict of interest among guideline authors for the AHA stroke guidelines. However, just 6% (2/34) of the authors for the 2013 or 2018 AHA guidelines had industry ties related to alteplase in the year of publication. Be sure to read the more nuanced discussion.
Ethics Week – COI And EM Journal Editors
Almost one third of prominent US-based EM journal editors have financial conflicts of interest, yet only one of those journals publicly disclosed this.
Ethics Week – Emergent Dialysis for Undocumented Immigrants
Once insured, undocumented immigrants with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who were then able to get scheduled vs emergency-only hemodialysis (HD) has a drop in 1-year mortality (NNT = 7) and saved almost $6,000/person/month in healthcare costs.
Ethics Week – Lost Evidence, Unpublished RCTs
Nearly 90,000 patients were enrolled in randomized trials that were never published. These patients were enrolled in good faith that their participation would benefit future patients. The key issue: “Large unreported trials threaten the credibility of the available, published evidence.”
Ethics Week – How to Spot Spin in RCTs
Spin is common (>40%) in emergency medicine RCTs. Watch out. Here’s how to spot spin.
Dumping Uninsured Patients – We All Know It’s Happening
Uninsured patients had 66% greater odds of ED discharge and 241% greater odds of ED transfer than similar privately insured patients in hospitals that had capacity to care for them in-house.
When Researchers Lie
Removal of the ARISTOTLE study (known to contain falsified data) from 22 subsequent meta-analyses led to a change in the conclusion of these meta-analyses nearly half the time. Research misconduct hurts people.
#ThisIsOurLane – Physicians and Gun Violence
The physician response to an incendiary tweet by the NRA last week has been striking. It has led to the hashtag #ThisIsOurLane, as the NRA admonished physicians to “stay in their lane” regarding gun policy. This is a review of the position statement by the American College of Physicians on reducing firearm deaths and injuries that sparked it all.