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How do doctors resolve ethically challenging dilemmas or cases with their patients?

Hello, I am going to be a first year medical student at a DO school and am interested in OBGYN and anesthesiology. I know that medical ethics is a course that physicians have to take but it seems unnerving when different values conflict and you have to choose the best treatment that will align with what the patient needs and is okay with.

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Rita’s Answer

If you have a dilemma, sometimes it's best to get the hospital involved. They will help you out so you have a team of people to discuss what can be done.
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James’s Answer

There are many good articles about how to navigated these ethical dilemmas. You absolutely need to learn about ethics basics: patient autonomy, benficence, non-maleficence, and justice.
I am a pediatric intensivist, so have worked a lot through such cases. All hospitals have an ethics committee that includes ethicists, clinicians, and lay people who discuss cases with providers and family members/patients to ultimately make recommendations for how to move through the challenges. Attorneys may need to be brought in pre-emptively to guide one through frought decision-making.
You always need to convene all of the physicians and team-members caring for a patient to assure all have the same understanding and agree to a shared stance on how to help the patient to the best outcome.
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