Patient Welfare and Trust

Abstract

This January-February 2020 issue marks the start of the Hastings Center Report's fiftieth volume. The issue introduces the column Looking Back, Looking Forward, which we plan to run in this volume only. Conceived by Hastings Center fellows Douglas Diekema and Lainie Friedman Ross, the column will explore the significance of landmark publications from the first fifty years of bioethics. For the first installment, Diekema looks at the unconventional moral position Hans Jonas took in his 1969 essay "Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects." In the lead article, "Trust, Risk, and Race in American Medicine," Laura Specker Sullivan contextualizes patient mistrust within a history of racism in general and in the nation's biomedical research and clinical institutions specifically. Specker Sullivan proposes ways for individual clinicians to improve relationships with distrustful patients and their families. Two commentaries provide additional insights and recommendations about the work of earning patient trust.