Surrogate decision makers for a patient are obligated to make health care decisions based on what the patient would have wanted if it is known.
David Alfandre, MD, MSPH
Contributing Writer
David Alfandre, MD, MSPH, is a general internist and a clinician-educator. His special interests include medical decision-making, “against medical advice” discharges, and ethics consultation. Dr Alfandre completed his public health training at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, followed by 2 years of service as a health educator in the Peace Corps. He graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and then completed his internal medicine training at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He is currently a health care ethicist at the VA National Center for Ethics in Health Care and an associate professor of medicine and population health at the NYU School of Medicine. He takes care of patients as a hospitalist teaching attending at the VA New York Harbor Health Care System. His twitter handle is @alfandremd.
