Lam Ryan X, Sonia He Zhi Mei, Thapar Ruhi, Wang Maggie, Birhiray Dion G, Milad Matthew, Ouellette Lara, Ghilzai Umar, Cushing Tucker J, Price M Brent, Ronna Brenden B, Atassi Omar H, Perkins Christopher H, Dawson John R, Granberry William M, Harrington Melvyn A, Dirschl Douglas R, Deveza Lorenzo R
School of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC.
J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2025 May 22;107(13):1513-1522. doi: 10.2106/JBJS.24.01137.
➢ Medical ethics education is a required component of orthopaedic surgery resident training per the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) guidelines, although no standardized curriculum currently exists.➢ Beyond the 4 principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice), additional ethical concepts relevant to orthopaedic care include utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, moral intuitionism, microethics, and narrative ethics.➢ Ethical themes identified in the literature relevant to orthopaedic surgery include the ethics involved in medical decision-making, use of new technologies, caring for vulnerable patients, performing high-stakes procedures, the impacts of trainee status on patient care, and patient attitude regarding conflict of interest.➢ Ethical themes that we sought to identify in the literature but found lacking include the ethics of providing orthopaedic care in low-resource settings, orthopaedics entrepreneurship, disability ethics, trainee mistreatment by their supervisors, and the ethics involved in the recognition and reporting of child and elder abuse.
