Professional Responsibility in Preventing Violence & Abuse

I seem to be on an article kick right now, because I have more for you today. I was actually looking for something else entirely and stumbled across the AMA‘s Journal of Ethics, Virtual Mentor, instead. Having never heard of it (not being an AMA member), I was fascinated that this online ethics publication had an entire issue related to clinicians and violence prevention, and that said publication included such topics as the potential conflict between patient confidentiality and mandatory reporting, and lateral violence. Not the usual fare, although it addresses issues such as IPV, child abuse, bullying and school violence, as well. (No sexual violence according to the TOC; I haven’t finished working my way through the issue to know if it’s buried. No elder abuse, either.)

I’ll be interested in hearing your thoughts. It’s a pretty intriguing mix of articles and it has an explicit public health focus. Plus it’s presented within an ethics framework, which you just don’t see that often, particularly in healthcare publications.

Please note, this was just published in February, so the content is pretty current, as is some of the (13 page) resource list included in the issue (PDF).