Show Notes
Recorded at the 2026 Massachusetts ACEP Annual Meeting, this episode of ACEP Frontline features Dr. Ryan Stanton in conversation with Dr. Alice Bukhman on the unique challenges of caring for patients in custody. Emergency physicians frequently care for individuals who arrive under law enforcement supervision, creating situations where patient rights, medical ethics, safety, and legal considerations can intersect in complex ways. Dr. Bukhman discusses the physician's primary obligation to the patient, regardless of custodial status, while exploring practical issues including privacy, informed consent, decision-making capacity, restraints, interactions with law enforcement, and requests for medical clearance or forensic information. The conversation also addresses strategies for navigating difficult encounters, protecting the therapeutic relationship, and ensuring that medical decisions remain grounded in the patient's best interests. Whether you practice in a busy urban trauma center or a rural emergency department, this episode provides practical guidance for managing some of the most nuanced and challenging situations emergency physicians encounter while reinforcing the principles that define patient-centered emergency care.
More from ACEP Frontline
In this Frontline Weekend Playlist episode, hear Dr. Patrick Kneeland present “Elevating Our Game: Cultivating Connected Transformation in Healthcare Settings” at the Fourth Annual Leadership Symposium & EM: High Risk – Do Not Miss Conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. He explores the drivers of professional well-being, psychological safety, and team culture, sharing practical leadership strategies for fostering connection, collaboration, resilience, and meaningful change in complex healthcare environments.
In this episode of ACEP Frontline, Dr. Ryan Stanton is joined by Dr. Peter Pruitt, chair of the ACEP Research Forum for ACEP26 in Chicago, to discuss the growth of emergency medicine research and the opportunities available to clinicians, residents, and aspiring researchers. He highlights this year’s Research Forum programming and shares practical insights from his session on conducting high-quality retrospective chart reviews, including how to avoid common pitfalls, generate meaningful research questions, and build a foundation for future practice-changing studies.
In this special edition episode of ACEP Frontline, Dr. Ryan Stanton is joined by Dr. Danya Khoujah, co-host of ACEP's Critical Decisions in Emergency Medicine podcast, to discuss ACEP's new Emergency Medicine Audio Network. They discuss their own podcast series as well as the rest of the network's audio offerings and the importance of being able to access clinical updates through different mediums.
In this episode of ACEP Frontline, Dr. Ryan Stanton is joined by Dr. Sean Ochsenbein to reflect on the Hurricane Helene flooding that inundated Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee, forcing a rooftop evacuation of patients and staff. He shares the leadership, disaster response, and emergency management lessons learned during the unprecedented flood, detailing how healthcare teams, first responders, and military rescue crews worked together to safely evacuate everyone from the hospital amid rapidly rising floodwaters.
In this Frontline Weekend Playlist episode, hear Dr. Andrew French, Vice President and Physician Executive for Quality, Safety, and Clinical Operations at Centura Health, present "Critical Connections, Leadership in Emergency Medicine" from the Fourth Annual Leadership Symposium and EM: High Risk, Do Not Miss Conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Dr. French reframes leadership as influence rather than title or authority, and argues that emergency medicine, with its daily demands for adaptability, quick decision making, and managing a huge range of perspectives under pressure, is the ideal training ground for building that skill. He walks through a practical framework for developing leadership on shift, starting with a simple personal leadership statement and building toward leading teams and larger systems, and makes the case that emergency physicians are uniquely positioned to lead change across the broader healthcare system. The throughline is that leadership is not acquired knowledge but a skill built through repeated practice, and the emergency department is the best laboratory available for building it.