AMA adopts ethical guidance on team-based health care

As a patient’s care now often lies in the hands of many collaborating health care professionals, the American Medical Association (AMA) today adopted ethical guidance for physicians as leader-members of care teams. Team-based health care models have emerged as the preferred method for providing coordinated, cost-effective and high-quality health care for patients.

Health care teams involve physicians, nurses, social workers and other health care professionals — all of whom play various clinical and administrative roles in the care of a single patient — at one or several sites of care. By virtue of their thorough and diverse training, experience and knowledge, physicians have a distinct appreciation of the breadth of health issues and treatment options that enable them to integrate the diverse professional perspectives and recommendations of the team into an appropriate, coherent plan of care for the patient.