Ethics, Legality, and Education in the Practice of Cardiology

Advances in diagnostics, drugs, and devices have revolutionized cardiology practice, and improved quality of life of the patients. However, awareness, achievements, and advances in cardiac health care have enhanced the demands and expectations of the community, which lacks awareness about the social, economic, administrative, professional, and technical constraints or limitations of implementation. Being unfamiliar with medical ethics and legal aspects of care, and suboptimal virtues among physicians, have led to patients and the public utilizing legal remedies. In addition, sophistication of medical practice, increasing costs of health care, involvement of insurance systems, increased awareness and high expectations from the community and patients, and increased participation of the media have altered the attitude toward claiming compensation and acquisition of health care delivery among the public. In view of the changing trends of consumers and emerging areas in health care, providers must get accustomed to patient empowerment and come up to their expectations. Interactive programs on these aspects in medical education will help students understand not only the intricacies of medical ethics and the laws and shortcomings of health professionals and/or health systems, but also strengthen their knowledge of ethics and laws to improve their practice. Principles of ethics and legal issues have to be discussed at every stage of medical education. To improve the quality of the physician–patient encounter, we need to develop formal and informal curricula about effective communication skills. This chapter also highlights preventive measures and educational aspects of cardiology practice.