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Biomedical subjects

S J Reiser

Publications and source records attributed to S J Reiser.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1983

Technology, specialization, and the allied health professions.

Medical specialization has been made possible through the evolution and dominance of the anatomic theory of disease and the growth of technology. Through the view offered by anatomy, the idea of dividing and studying portions of the body seemed natural and desirable. Through technology, diagnostic and therapeutic actions on these parts became possible. Specialization has affected all aspects of medicine, particularly the allied health professions. The narrow perspective on illness that specialization can produce in allied health professionals may be forestalled through systematic educational efforts to broaden their understanding of illness by delineating the ethical dimensions of their relationship to patients, creating a view of their place in the historical evolution of medicine, and examining how technology influences medicine and its role in shaping allied health careers.

Allied Health Personnel↗
PubMed1981

Ethics rounds: a model for teaching ethics in the psychiatric setting.

Despite growing interest in ethical matters in psychiatry, little attention has been paid to means of teaching ethics to mental health professionals. In a monthly "ethics rounds" developed in a community mental health center, the co-leaders of the rounds visited one of the center's clinical services during a regularly scheduled staff conference to lead a discussion of a case selected by the staff and the underlying ethical problems. The rounds were attended by personnel at all levels and from a variety of disciplines. A survey of participants showed that the program was generally well received. Two cases selected for discussion at the rounds--one concerned with confidentiality and the other with court-ordered treatment--are presented, along with the discussion that each case stimulated. The advantages and disadvantages of the model are discussed, and suggestions for implementing a similar program are offered.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Refusing treatment for mental illness: historical and ethical dimensions.

The author summarizes the historical bases for overzealous intervention by physicians, noting the tensions among medical technology, nature as a healing force, and the physician's warrant to treat. He discusses John Mill's On Liberty and Gerald Dworkin's "Paternalism" and suggests that there are times when the intervention should be withheld, but never the care.

Ethics, Medical↗
PubMed1980

Words as scalpels: transmitting evidence in the clinical dialogue.

This paper examines rationales and policies developed by physicians through history about what to tell patients found to have serious illness. The widespread belief among doctors that the revelation of threatening news causes patients considerable anguish and seriously erodes the prospect of maintaining their hope encouraged a policy of concealment for many centuries. Arguments that encourage candor have been increasingly pressed during the last two centuries. Advocates point out that candor can be beneficial and is favored by many patients, and that a policy of concealment usually fails to work, tends to place stress on patients by constraining discussion of anxieties generated by vague or explicit knowledge of the true situation, and exerts a damaging effect on trust in the medical relationship. Not only the moral aspects of this problem but also its clinical dimensions, such as mastering the skill to discuss threatening news with patients, bear considerable scrutiny by physicians and medical educators.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1978

The emergence of the concept of screening for disease.

Public health officials, industrial leaders, and insurance companies early in this century optimistically advocated the potential for improved health and productivity through regular physical examinations. Doctors and the public, fed both by the exigencies of war and the experience of new technology, later joined the pursuit of protection from hazard--physical, social, and economic. But these very technologies--newer and more "mechanistic"--changed interest in the annual checkup into a fervor for "mass screening." By the 1970's the quarrel shifted from affective questions to matters of effectiveness and efficiency. Has progress been real?

History, 19th Century↗