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[look4wisdom]

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Please show me a physician who doesn't make medical decisions that are influenced by politics, religion, or social views?

 

[scotchtapetest]

Please show me a physician who doesn't make medical decisions that are influenced by politics, religion, or social views?

Actually I don’t know any physician who makes medical decisions that are influenced by politics, religion or social views. Physicians I associate with or consult for seeking treatment make medical decisions based on medical facts, their medical education and medical experience.

 

[Animus]

Please show me a physician who doesn't make medical decisions that are influenced by politics, religion, or social views?

I agree with Bala, I think it is in fact illegal for a physician to withold treatment or procedures from an individual even if they disagree with them. They do not have to perform said treatments or procedures, however, they must allow the patient to know about them and refer them to someone that will do said things if necessary.

So I think you are wrong and most of them do go against how they feel, one day I will give treatment or advice contrary to what I believe without hesitation because that is the way this profession should work. I am not here to pass judgement I am here to help in the best way I can and that involves giving people multiple choices of their prefered treatment.

 

[bth7]

Wow. Liberals constantly amaze me. Idealistic types?

Yes, "idealistic types." Meaning as I said, people (like myself) who may have assumed that the types of refusals discussed above didn't actually take place.

Are you implying that religous people aren't idealists?

I wasn't intending to. I don't think I said that.

I have no doubt that your definition of whats best for a patient in a given context would be markedly different from mine.

Sounds like we agree on at least this point. As I said above, "many within medicine may have an all together different conception of the patient's best interest."

Why shouldn't a physician base there medical decisions on a worldview that is religious? Im quite certain your going to make medical decisions based on yours...

I didn't single out religious views. I specifically mentioned political views as well. Clearly, there are some situations in which some religious and political views might be in conflict with a scientific, evidence-based theory of medical care. As professionals, we receive training in making this distinction which may occasionally require we forfeit our personal "worldview" in favor of meeting our professional obligations.

I'm sure we'd all like to minimize this conflict, but as I said, I think its idealistic to believe it doesn't exist.


bth

 

[scpod]

I wish the church of scientology would start a medical school. That way, you wouldn't have to take behavioral science.

Why not? Christian Scientists have their own medical schools. It's an "intensive two-week course of training" where you learn to pray for sick people. When you get sick you call up a practitioner listed in their periodicals and they pray for you and charge a fee. They also have Christian Science nurses who provide spiritual report and non-medical care. Fortunately, most major medical insurances cover the Christian Science practitioner's fee, and any unreimbursed payments are deductible as medical expeses on your federal tax return (assuming you are still alive to file it).

 

[taurus70]

Does this mean we are going to ban hospital rotations at any hospitals that have any religious affiliation? Boy that really knocks out the NYC area. I am no sure where all this hostility is coming from towards religion, but I don't recall any of my professors or attendings stopping a lecture or rounds to explain why this violates his belief that people descended from a doughnut sent from the far reaches of the Dunkin Donuts Galaxy. If the school or hospital gets out of line too far, they lose their accreditation. I think we are all just tired from rotations and working on Christmas instead of being with our families.

 

[DOSouthpaw]

Well if it makes you guys feel better, the new dean of the Southern Baptist Osteopathic School is Catholic. lol

 

[Old_Mil]

But on a more serious note, your religious, social and other views are completely irrelevant when it comes to practicing medicine. A physician is licensed by the licensure board of the state and they must follow the rules/regulations/protocols of the board and if for whatever reason one does not approve, he/she should stop practicing medicine until that specific rule/regulation/protocol is changed through appropriate legal channels. So one's ethical boundaries only apply when it does not violate the ethical boundaries as outlined by the licensure board (I'll be more than glad to give an example if necessary). So as a physician you cannot withhold treatment if such treatment is required by your state board even if it goes against your own ethical boundaries!

A very interesting point of view, one that has been effectively used by the modern medical establishment to try and silence those annoying Catholics who are opposed to abortion, euthanasia, and all that other nasty stuff Hippocrates warned us not to do. Let's take a look at where such thinking can take us...

In her acclaimed new book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, journalist and bioethicist Harriet Washington traces this mistrust in the first comprehensive history of the medical mistreatment of African Americans.

Publisher's Weekly praised Washington as a "great storyteller," and named Medical Apartheid one of the best books of 2006, finding it "even at its most distressing, compulsively readable." PW, Kirkus and Booklist each honored the book with starred reviews, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association bestowed its Honor Nonfiction Award for 2007 on Medical Apartheid.

Washington's book details horrific abuses by the guardians of health.

Africans found unfit by slave ship surgeons were routinely thrown overboard to die at sea en route to the Americas.

Physicians in the antebellum south believed that blacks were immune to pain and conducted hideous experiments on men, women and children without anesthesia.

More recent experiments include non-consensual and disproportionate sterilization of blacks like the "Mississippi appendectomy" performed on civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hamer.

Blacks were also the subjects of painful radiation and dermatological studies.

In the 1960's, a neurosurgeon removed parts of the brains of black boys to regulate "behavior problems."

And, from 1932 until 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service in its Tuskegee experiments promised to treat hundreds of black men for syphilis, but actually provided no treatment, and instead watched the men die slow, painful deaths.

...no doubt, all done in accordance with the prevailing standards of the time. In fact, the concept that doctors can - let alone should - divorce morality from their practice is one of the stupidest things I've heard otherwise educated people in medical school say.