Ethics Case Studies & Education

ACP Ethics Case Study Series on Medscape

Free CME/MOC credits are available as indicated from Medscape for completion of the following ACP ethics case studies. Each case study draws on an ethical challenge encountered by physicians in everyday practice, teaching or research. A free Medscape login is required for access and completion.

• Confidentiality and Privacy: Beyond HIPAA to Honey, Can We Talk? CME/MOC
• Secret Recordings of Office Visits by Patients CME
• Addressing a Colleague's Unprofessional Behavior During Sign-Out CME
• Patient Requests for Specific Care: 'Surely You Can Explain to My Insurer That I Need Boniva? CME
• Maintaining Medical Professionalism Online: Posting of Patient Information CME
• Banning Harmful Health Behaviors as a Condition of Employment: Where There's Smoke There's Fired? CME
• Addressing a Colleague's Sexually Explicit Facebook Post
• Wellness Programs and Patient Goals of Care
• Resident Duty Hours: To Hand Over or Gloss Over?
• When an Aging Colleague Seems Impaired
• Preventive Health Screening, Ethics, and the Cognitively Impaired Patient
• Stewardship of Health Care Resources: Allocating Mechanical Ventilators During Pandemic Influenza
• Stewardship of Health Care Resources: Responding to a Patient’s Request for Antibiotics
• Copied and Pasted and Misdiagnosed (or Cloned Notes and Blind Alleys)
• Who Should Get What? Mammography and the Stewardship of Health Care Resources
• Patient/Physician/family Caregiver Relationships: When the Family Caregiver is a Physician
• Physician Work Stoppages and Political Demonstrations -- Economic Self-Interest or Patient Advocacy? Where Is the Line?
• Serving as an Expert Witness: Is There a Duty? CME/MOC
• Author! Author! Who Should Be Named in a Published Study? An Ethics Case Study
• The Difficult Patient: Should You End the Relationship? What Now? An Ethics Case Study
• Dealing with the 'Disruptive' Physician Colleague

Additional ACP Ethics Case Studies

• Must You Disclose Mistakes Made by Other Physicians?
• Providing Care to Undocumented Immigrants
• Twenty-eight additional case studies are published in the book Ethical Choices: Case Studies for Medical Practice (2nd edition)

Ethics Manual (CME/MOC)

The ACP Ethics Manual is the core of College ethics policy. The seventh edition examines issues in medical ethics, reflecting on the ethical tenets of medicine and their application to emerging challenges while also revisiting older issues that are still very pertinent. It helps physicians be prepared to deal with ethical challenges: to identify and reaffirm the fundamentals of medical ethics—such as the patient-physician relationship—and apply principles and reasoned arguments in resolving dilemmas and in debate about ethics topics.

A 25-question quiz module on the seventh edition of the Ethics Manual is available for up to 10 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits^TM and MOC Points. The activity is free for ACP members and Annals subscribers.

Hidden Curriculum (CME/MOC)

CME/MOC activities are available on the ACP position paper Hidden Curricula, Ethics, and Professionalism: Optimizing Clinical Learning Environments in Becoming and Being a Physician (Ann Intern Med. 2018;168:506-8).

Annals of Internal Medicine offers two CME/MOC activities for ACP members and Annals subscribers:

• Ethics, Professionalism, and the Hidden Curriculum
  (click on “CME/MOC” on the left sidebar)
• Annals On Call – Hidden Curriculum

CME/MOC credits are available to ACP members for this Curbsiders Podcast. Sanjay Desai, MD, coauthor of ACP’s position paper and Internal Medicine Program Director at Johns Hopkins, reviews several cases that illustrate how institutional norms can shape the practice of medicine. Detailed summaries of the cases discussed are also available.

Ethics Sessions at Internal Medicine Meeting 2020

April 23 – 25, 2020, Los Angeles, CA

Sponsored by the Ethics, Professionalism & Human Rights Committee (EPHRC)

• Ethical Case Challenges: Precision Medicine and Genetics in Primary Care
• Ethics Year in Review
• Spirituality in End-of-Life Care: What is the Physician’s Role?
• Practical Palliative Care: Managing Pain at the End of Life

Ethics education sessions on different topics are offered at the annual Internal Medicine Meeting each year. Information on past Internal Medicine Meeting ethics sessions is available upon request at ethics@mail.acponline.org.

Attending the Internal Medicine Meeting is an excellent way to fulfill your state CME relicensure requirements. The ethics sessions may fulfill specific CME content requirements of your state’s licensure renewal. Letters of participation documenting attendance are available online.