The Ethics Liaison Program: building a moral community.

Ethicists often struggle to maintain institution-wide awareness of and commitment to medical ethics. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), we created the Ethics Liaison Program to address that challenge by making ethics part of the moral culture of the institution. Liaisons represent clinical and non-clinical areas throughout the medical centre.

Predictors and correlates of dissatisfaction with intensive care.

Objective: Dissatisfaction is an important threat to high-quality care. The aim of this study was to identify factors independently associated with dissatisfaction with critical care.

Design: Prospectively collected observational cohort study.

Clinical review: influenza pandemic - physicians and their obligations.

An influenza pandemic threatens to be the most lethal public health crisis to confront the world. Physicians will have critical roles in diagnosis, containment and treatment of influenza, and their commitment to treat despite increased personal risks is essential for a successful public health response. The obligations of the medical profession stem from the unique skills of its practitioners, who are able to provide more effective aid than the general public in a medical emergency.