Dean Jeffrey E. Lewis and the faculty of
Saint Louis University School of Law
and the members of the
Saint Louis University Law Journal

cordially invite you to attend
the 2008 Richard J. Childress MEMORIAL LECTURE

SANDRA H. Johnson

Friday, OCTOBER 17, 2008
IN THE William H. Kniep Courtroom

A good part of the work in health law and policy is aimed toward influencing or directing physician behavior. At the same time, however, physicians often complain that the law makes them do bad things – provide futile care, neglect patients in pain, practice defensive medicine to the detriment of their patients and at expense to the health care system, and so on. And, regulators and advocates are frequently frustrated with the seeming imperviousness or hostility of doctors to efforts to constrain or incentivize particular behaviors on their part.

This lecture will explore the rocky relationship among law, medicine and ethics. First, it will provide specific examples where law, medicine and ethics have clashed, drawing on experiences and studies regarding pain management, the response to managed care, the regulation of research with human subjects and medical futility. Second, it will analyze the common issues shared by these attempts to regulate physician behavior with an eye toward identifying the ways that physicians react to legal risk in different aspects of their practice; the limits of the adoption of a "clinical guidelines" and safe harbor approach to lawmaking in the medical area, including the design and implementation of immunity statutes to encourage physician risk-taking; and the extent of a call from ethics to assume legal risk in the practice of medicine.

For more information, call Susie Lee at 977-3964 or by e-mail lees2@slu.edu