Word: patient
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Chicago surveyed 466 faculty physicians at Chicago-area medical schools. Almost half of the 231 respondents - 45% - said they had prescribed placebos in regular clinical practice and, of those, just over half had prescribed them in the previous year. Among the reasons the doctors gave: to calm a patient down, to respond to demands for medication that the doctor felt was unnecessary, or simply to do something after all other clinical treatment options had failed...
...believe that most prescribing doctors felt they were doing the right thing. Of all the physicians surveyed - whether or not they had prescribed placebos - 96% believed that dummy pills could have real therapeutic effects. But does that make it acceptable to administer them? If placebos work by manipulating a patient's expectations, then prescribing them suggests that doctors are deliberately deceiving their patients. That undermines one of the key principles of Western medical ethics: informed consent. Most patients believe they have the right to know - and in most cases to refuse - the treatments that doctors recommend...
Doctors seem aware of this quandary. Twelve percent of survey participants said they thought placebos should be banned completely from regular clinical practice. Among the doctors who prescribed them, one in five said they outright lied to patients by claiming a placebo was medication. But more commonly, the physicians came up with creative ways to explain, saying the substance might help but wouldn't hurt, or that "this may help you but I'm not sure how it works." For its part, the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of U.S. doctors and medical students, tells its members that...
...wouldn't disclosure drain the power from a placebo? Not necessarily, according to the AMA. Once physicians have been given general permission to use placebos, the AMA's guidelines say, they don't need identify to their patients which treatments are true medical interventions and which are not: "In this way the physician respects the patient's autonomy and fosters a trusting relationship, while the patient still may benefit from the placebo effect." It's still not clear how many doctors prescribe placebos. The current Chicago survey is the first U.S. survey of its kind this century...
...slum district Kibera said that if Odinga called them out, they will come, no matter what the police say. The supporters told TIME that they believe Odinga is the legitimately elected leader of the country, and that the only solution is for Kibaki to step down. "We have been patient. We have lowered our tempers down a bit because we want to get directives from our leaders," says Morris Otieno, 45. "If they say 'Let us go to town, we will go peacefully. If police are going to interfere, you can expect what will happen - hell will break loose...