#MDsHaveRights2

Join the conversation on Twitter. Use the hashtag, #MDsHaveRights2 to take about conscience protection in Canada. 

"Do you want a doctor with moral integrity?"

Our doctors maintain professional, respectful and compassionate relationships with their patients. This includes accompanying patients as they make difficult choices, understanding fully that the final decision is always the patient’s.  Our doctors simply ask that they be respected as professionals in return.  Forcing doctors to violate their moral integrity is not only damaging to the doctor, but to the patient and to medical services as a whole.  It will inevitably mean that many doctors will be forced to leave patient care, leaving Canadians with less access to the medical care they want and need.   The choice is yours. Will you tell the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) what you think about conscience rights? The deadline for comments is: Feb 20, 2015   http://policyconsult.cpso.on.ca/?page_id=5165  The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) have a draft policy that would demand that doctors participate in morally controversial procedures like birth control, abortion and even euthanasia (if it becomes legal). Participation means making referrals and actually performing these procedures when the regulator (CPSO) considers them to be “urgent or otherwise necessary to prevent imminent harm, suffering, and/or deterioration.” This as a very broad requirement and will be open to abuse. Doctors who cannot participate due to deeply held moral or religious commitments will be vulnerable to punishment from the regulator, even though their fundamental freedom of conscience and religion is guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  This is a form of discrimination.  If you are not already receiving CMDS updates and want to find out more about this issue:

Honesty in Medicine

-Jennifer Derwey

Would legislation that requires doctors to conceal information or conceal their professional and morally based opinions be in the best interest of the doctor patient relationship? Consider this from Dr. James F. Drane, Professor Emeritus, University of Edinboro Pennsylvania:

Not telling the truth in the doctor-patient relationship requires special attention because patients today, more than ever, experience serious harm if they are lied to. Not only is patient autonomy undermined but patients who are not told the truth about an intervention experience a loss of that all important trust which is required for healing. Honesty matters to patients. They need it because they are ill, vulnerable, and burdened with pressing questions which require truthful answers. 

Read the full paper here: http://www.uchile.cl/portal/investigacion/centro-interdisciplinario-de-estudios-en-bioetica/publicaciones/76983/honesty-in-medicine-should-doctors-tell-the-truth