Legal and Ethical Challenges, Part 1: General Population

Several federal and state laws and regulations, as well as ethical medical principles, govern the emergency clinician's practice of care. Although some common legal-medical and ethical principles are shared with other medical specialties, emergency medicine and emergency psychiatry have unique legal and ethical challenges. This article presents and discusses these challenges, including the physician-patient relationship, malpractice, confidentiality and privilege, duty to report, decision-making capacity and vicarious decision-making, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, right to treatment, hospital admissions, involuntary commitment, forced medication administration, and child and elder abuse.