News in brief - July 3, 2006

AMA works to prevent doctor suicide - Tdap shots encouraged for health care workers - Doctors tackle ethical issues at CEJA open forum - AMA selects new leadership

AMA works to prevent doctor suicide

The American Medical Association will collaborate with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Federation of State Physician Health Programs to study suicide among physicians and develop educational programs that focus on this issue, according to policy adopted at the AMA's Annual Meeting in Chicago last month.

Physicians have one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation, and the hope is that increasing awareness of this problem through programs run by medical schools, state physician health committees and the AMA Alliance will reduce doctors' risk.

In addition, the AMA will contact the directors of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the American Psychiatric Assn. to explore ways to reduce the overall prevalence of suicide.

"People don't think that physicians would be afflicted by this, that physicians would be above this, and it's not true," said Michael Simon, MD, a delegate and anesthesiologist from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., who proposed this policy because a relative, who also was a physician, committed suicide.

Tdap shots encouraged for health care workers

Physicians and other health care professionals should be immunized against pertussis to reduce the chance of getting sick themselves and then passing the illness to patients, according to policy passed at the AMA Annual Meeting in Chicago last month.

"Pertussis is not just for kids. The CDC says that each year adults make up one-third of all pertussis cases that are reported," said Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD, an internist from Atlanta, Ga., who spoke for the American College of Physicians.

The recommendation was part of a larger policy that encourages influenza vaccine for health care professionals, as well as both shots for patients who the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends receive it.

The ACIP recommends routine use of the combination tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccine, Tdap, for those ages 11 to 18 and adults who have close contact with infants. Adults also should receive at least one Tdap booster.

Doctors tackle ethical issues at CEJA open forum

AMA delegates shared their thoughts on gifts from industry and nontherapeutic human enhancement at the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs' open forum at the Association's Annual Meeting last month.

A survey given to delegates asked, among other things, whether the AMA's monetary limit of $100 on gifts to physicians from industry was too stringent. While some doctors said the $100 limit deprived them of their ability to make judgment calls on the propriety of industry gifts, most delegates said gifts to practicing physicians are a trivial matter compared with industry sponsorship of academic programs, clinical trials and principal investigators. The house did not adopt a related resolution proposed in the Reference Committee on Amendments to Constitution and Bylaws that would have allowed physicians' spouses to attend industry-sponsored continuing medical education events.

The ethical issues of nontherapeutic enhancement will become more prevalent as new interventions are developed and patients ask doctors not to treat disease, but to enhance their characteristics and capabilities, said Robert M. Sade, MD, CEJA vice chair, in introducing the topic. Is it OK, Dr. Sade asked, to give human-growth hormone to a boy who lacks a medical condition but appears destined to be only five feet tall as an adult? Delegates urged CEJA to investigate the matter and propose ethical guidance to deal with such situations.

AMA selects new leadership

Ronald M. Davis, MD, a preventive medicine specialist from East Lansing, Mich., was selected president-elect of the American Medical Association at the AMA Annual Meeting in June. Dr. Davis will serve in the position until he becomes AMA president in June 2007.

Austin, Texas, anesthesiologist Joseph P. Annis, MD, was elected to a four-year term on the AMA Board of Trustees. Steven J. Stack, MD, an emergency physician in Memphis, Tenn., was elected young physician representative to the board.

Re-elected to the board were: Peter W. Carmel, MD, a pediatric neurosurgeon from New Jersey; Joseph M. Heyman, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Amesbury, Mass.; and Cecil B. Wilson, MD, a Winter Park, Fla. internist. Dr. Wilson will serve as board chair. Long Island, N.Y., attorney Robert R. McMillan was re-elected to a third and final term on the board.

The AMA also announced that medical student Chris DeRienzo was elected as medical student representative on the board.