Category / Case Studies / Public and Population Health
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Case Study – It’s Too Much – First My Daughter, and Now This
Fiona has custody of her two orphaned grandchildren and works as a housekeeper in a private home while the children are in school. Medical expenses are beyond Fiona’s budget. How can Fiona get – and pay for – healthcare?
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Case Study – “If you prick me, do I not bleed?”
Elizabeth is over 100 years old, with little cognitive decline. Her blood-thinning medication requires monthly blood draws, which are painful and distressing to Elizabeth. Is continuing the monthly blood draws the right thing to do?
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Case Study – I Know What You’re Thinking
An African American male patient, age forty-two, was admitted to a skilled nursing unit after surgery for head and neck cancer with lymph involvement, newly diagnosed. What is presupposed by his “life on the streets”? by his active drug use in the past?
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A Case of Clinical Ethics Consultation
Goals of care may be in conflict. Assistance requested in complex case of anoxic brain injury patient with unreliable DPOA and potential conflict regarding goals of care.
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The Case of Grace: Why Are They Doing All This?
Shortly after she retired, Grace, who has never married, sold her home and moved into Happy Valley Nursing Home where she has lived the past nine years and has now slipped into what the doctor agrees is Alzheimer’s disease. Grace started exhibiting signs of illness, which after blood tests, appears to be related to abnormal function of her spleen.
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Case Study – Good Death or Assisted Suicide?
“My body is all worn out. I’m worn out. Don’t want to do this anymore, Doc. Just stop that little gadget that shocks me and the part that keeps my heart going. I want them stopped. Yes, the pacemaker, too. A magnet will stop it, right? Just do it. Please.”
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Case Study – What Should We Do? DNR for an Adult with Down Syndrome
George is a twenty-three-year-old young man with Down’s syndrome, who lived independently in a group home. Unfortunately, an accident resulted in George suffering a severe brain injury, with no signs of consciousness after a year. He’s dependent upon a feeding tube.
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Case Study – Disagreement Over Advance Directive
Who decides if the medical team thinks care is non-beneficial and the family disagrees?
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Case Study – Could This Happen At Our Hospital?
A 79-year-old white female with advanced ovarian cancer, severe back and abdominal pain, COPD, depression and anxiety disorder, and asthma was admitted to the hospital from Happy Valley Nursing Home through the emergency room.
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Confidentiality in the Age of AIDS: A Case Study in Clinical Ethics
This article presents the case of an HIV-positive patient who presented the treating physician, a psychiatrist, with an ethical dilemma. We provide the details of the case, identify the ethical issues it raises, and examine the ethical principles involved.
In their article, “Confidentiality in the Age of AIDS,” Martin L. Smith and Kevin P. Martin present a complex case in clinical ethics. Their analysis examines a physician’s quandary when treating a mentally incompetent HIV-positive patient: whether to uphold physician-patient confidentiality or to violate this confidentiality by warning a third party.
