Doctors as fiduciaries: do medical professionals have the right not to treat?

Poiesis and Praxis 3 (4):256-276 (2005)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In the first part of the paper, the author discusses the origin and obligation of the medical profession and argues that the duty of fidelity in the context of a patient–professional relationship (PPR) is the central obligation of medical professionals. The duty of fidelity entails seeking the patient’s best interests even at the expense of the professional’s own, and refusing to treat a risk-patient infected by SARS is a breach of fidelity because the medical professional is involved in a situation of conflict of interests and places his/her own health interests ahead of the patient. The author attributes the failure to the fact that professional ethical codes are not legally enforceable, and this failure at the microethical level damages the integrity of the profession at the macroethical level. The author argues that professional autonomy must be subordinated to professional fidelity for the medical profession to survive as a social institution. In the second part of the paper, the author shows that the PPR has most of the important attributes of a fiduciary relationship, and analyzes several important court cases in some common law jurisdictions to illustrate the increasing importance of fiduciary law in adjudicating disputes between patients and medical professionals, and appeals to law courts and legislatures to apply more stringent fiduciary principles on the medical profession to ensure that the professional duty of fidelity is enforced and the goal of medicine fulfilled for the interests of members of the community who has established the medical profession in the first place

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,388

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Are doctors altruistic?W. Glannon - 2002 - Journal of Medical Ethics 28 (2):68-69.
What can we learn by looking for the first code of professional ethics?Michael Davis - 2003 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 24 (5):433-454.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-09-02

Downloads
56 (#401,341)

6 months
5 (#702,808)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Fiduciary Duties and Commercial Surrogacy.Emma A. Ryman - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Western Ontario

Add more citations

References found in this work

Principles of biomedical ethics.Tom L. Beauchamp - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by James F. Childress.
Code, covenant, contract, or philanthropy.William F. May - 1975 - Hastings Center Report 5 (6):29-38.
Medicine, Patients and the Law.Margaret Brazier & Emma Cave - 1992 (MB), 2011 - Penguin Books.
Profession and professional ethics.David T. Ozar - 1995 - Encyclopedia of Bioethics 4:2103-2112.

Add more references