What Should Clinicians and Patients Know About the Clinical Gaze, Disability, and Iatrogenic Harm When Making Decisions?

While clinicians, ethicists, and policymakers are increasingly aware that race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class biases interfere with care provision, disability is not always considered as a confounding factor. This article explores the way embodiment affects personal and professional values. When patients who live with bodies others might not fully comprehend or embrace refuse-or challenge-clinical interventions, they offer real opportunities for clinicians to grasp the central role that embodied experience plays in how patients make health decisions and thereby avoid harming patients or undermining their relationships with patients.

An ethical analysis of clinical triage protocols and decision-making frameworks: what do the principles of justice, freedom, and a disability rights approach demand of us?

Background: The expectation of pandemic-induced severe resource shortages has prompted authorities to draft and update frameworks to guide clinical decision-making and patient triage. While these documents differ in scope, they share a utilitarian focus on the maximization of benefit. This utilitarian view necessarily marginalizes certain groups, in particular individuals with increased medical needs.

The failure of formal rights and equality in the clinic: a critique of bioethics.

For communities which espouse egalitarian principles, the hierarchical nature of care-giving relationships poses an extraordinary challenge. Patients' accounts of their illnesses and of their medical care capture the latent tension which exists between notional, political equality and the need for dependency on care from others. I believe that the power imbalance in doctor-patient relationships has broad implications for liberal democracies.