No, I didn’t, and I apologize if that is how it came off. I was merely trying to say that this opinion should not be ascribed to anyone on this board, who never made such a statement, just because you have heard others say it. Not all religious people walk/think/talk in lockstep with each other. And, incidentally, the way you first asked me about this was pretty heavy in its implication about what **I ** must think about athiest doctors…even though I never even said that I would prefer a Catholic doctor.
No…this is the quote:
What I am trying to say is that anyone who makes statements such as this one:
Should look into his or her own heart, and try to figure out where their own prejudices lie.
No problem. I am pretty cheesed off (as you may have observed! ) I came on this thread to try to explain the Catholic viewpoint about doctors and medical ethics. I tried to do it (at first, anyway), in a way that was simply informative and non-judgemental either way. For my trouble, I was argued with and called ignorant. I’m sure you can understand my annoyance.
Sure. Being a (former) Catholic myself, I can understand the importance of someone who shares your views. Medical ethics are to me as important as your Catholic beliefs are to you. Part of that is being able to treat your patients objectively and respect their decisions. So I do see your point, but I hope we can respectfully agree to disagree.
Of course. The thing is, I don’t necessarily disagree with you. My point was more that a medical professional should not take offense at the idea that a patient would like to have a doctor with a similar moral code…it’s not about assuming that the doctor won’t be professional and do his or her job to the best of their abilities. In many cases, it is about not wanting to be in a position where you feel that you are tacitly supporting medical ethics that you don’t agree with.
Of course, I think birth control pills are the best invention since the wheel. But what about the doctor’s right to abide by his personal moral principles? I wouldn’t want a doctor who could set those aside too easily.
I’m a liberal Christian and I have done the same thing in rejecting a shrink for being a blatant fundamentalist. I was broke at the time and he was a psychiatrist at a free mental health clinic. I was warned that he pushed Bible reading a little too much.
How did you find out that the patient was a fundamentalist Christian?
Sounds like your shrink is a psychologist perhaps rather than a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist actually does have an MD. That doesn’t mean that they’re not off in woo-woo land though. (I can’t help but grin since I had my own “six weeks tun up” this afternoon. The mental image of The Good Doctor levitating to the strains of sitar music is delightful!)
Don’t be silly; someone who thinks this life is all there is is much less likely to regard you as expendable. It’s the believers in souls who have a motivation to kill you; after all, they’re sending you where you deseve. The more seriously you believe in a soul, the less sense it makes to oppose killing; for that matter, it makes more sense to kill as much as possible if you believe. The more who die, the more go to where they deserve.
Not to mention, you assume that a true believer doctor won’t decide you’re following a false God and need to be killed. That’s more likely than an atheist doctor bothering to kill you for your organs. Do you think we atheists drink babies’ blood, too ?
I’d prefer an atheist doctor, since they aren’t likely to decide God wants me dead. Hey, if you can be paranoid, so can I.
Because a great many people fear, hate and mistrust atheists. There was a recent study saying we are the least trusted minority in America.
Quite the opposite; if he doesn’t, he’s much more likely to reqard you as subhuman; a two legged incubator for babies and inferior to men.
Der Tris -thank you for the clarification. I did not know that atheists were viewed with such suspicion. Sarafeena I didn’t call you ignorant-I stated there was ignorance present in this thread. I have attempted to clarify the role that medical ethics plays in determining the care received. I have no issue with a HCP’s moral code-and I include atheist’s in that category. Everyone has a moral code, whether it is sanctioned by a religious construct or not. It’s a free marketplace for doctors (for the most part), so by all means, make your selections according to your preferences. Where did I say otherwise? I think we are posting at cross purposes–my point is that even with any certain, codified moral stance, no physician can refuse to meet a standard of care. If he or she does so, that is malpractice. If the doc is upfront about it, caveat emptor, to my mind. Unfortunately, in many rural areas, doctor choice is not a reality.
If a doc is anti-abortion, then it would behoove him or her (love that word, behoove) to NOT enter into a practice where the procedure is done. And, I would stipulate that he or she needs to be upfront with their pts about their inability to perform such a basic function. Also, the doctor cannot legally (yet) refuse to give a pt information on abortions, if the pt is a legal adult.
I dislike this “look into your own heart and find your prejudice” stuff–I have no problem with a doctor having a deep religious faith. Such a faith can strengthen someone’s practice and be a great help to the practitioner. My “beef” is when that adherence to their faith interferes with standards of care–the birth control example. I had been puzzled by the idea, posed by the OP, that atheism would somehow negatively impact on a practice or on care. Der Tris cleared that up for me.
Am late to work, but whoever upthread asked how I knew that it was fundamentalists who queried my faith, I know this because they told me so. They wanted to know if I “knew” the Lord, and if I didn’t, they could tell me all about Him right then and there. I believe the word witness was used.The Bible was presented to me and referred to as the ultimate source(whateve that may mean-I didn’t inquire). They were very nice and after my polite refusal, we got along fine.
As a pretty hard core atheist, pro birth-control, pro-choice person, I disagree with you enormously. The first portion of the Hippocratic Oath says “First do no harm.” If a doctor sincerely believes that abortion or even birth control constitute murder (cf. C. Everett Koop), he has a moral and professional obligation to refuse to provide those services to anyone. What would be reprehensible is if that same doctor used one’s request as an opportunity to try to convert the patient to his own beliefs, and that would merit censure. But refusal to murder (in his belief system)? I think not. These issues are far more morally ambiguous than most of the issues that seem to be raised by the extreme Religious Right, and while I disagree with them, I can respect the person who holds them. Well, until he starts blowing away abortion doctors or harassing potential abortion/birth control seekers.
Maybe I can find a nice, devout atheist doctor who will support that choice because the doctor’s role is to give the fully informed, consenting patient of sound mind an elective procedure for which she has no medical contra-indications.
Doctors’ personal beliefs affect their medical decisions all the time. Those beliefs may or may not be religious, so I don’t give two shits what religion my doctor is (aside from Scientology) as long as they will provide me with enough knowledge about all the options to make my own health decisions.
And doctors do it all the time, particularly if you are an unmarried woman under 35 with no kids who wants to be sterilized.
Maybe I should poll all the doctors who have refused my most preferable method of birth control on their religion and see how many atheists are in that bunch. Could lead to me actively seeking atheist doctors.
Yeah, they REALLY don’t like doing it on fairly young and childless women, maybe because it seems highly likely that they could change their minds, and reversing the sterilization is much more difficult and potentially unsuccessful. I was very lucky that I got mine back in '82, when the country hadn’t quite taken the conservative bent as far as it’s gone since. I was required to get a psychiatrist to sign off on it, though. It was funny - I’d seen him before, he knew I knew my mind and was very reasonable about the whole thing, so we talked about it for all of maybe two minutes and spent the rest of the session chatting. This was back in the days of early and wonderul Kaiser Permanente in southern California - none of it cost me one red cent!
OK, granted, you did not SPECIFICALLY call ME ignorant. The reason that this particular word so offends me is because I do not believe that generally speaking it is due to a lack of understanding of medical ethics that people want a doctor who shares their religious views.
So…if my life’s passion is to be a doctor who takes care of pregnant mothers and bring babies into the world, then somehow it is ethically wrong of me to become an OB/Gyn, because I don’t want to kill babies in the womb? And by default, patients then do not have the right to go to a doctor who does not kill babies? You may be surprised to hear that some of us do not consider abortion to be nothing but a “basic function.”
I believe I mentioned something about referring a patient to another doctor.
I dislike when words like “sanctimonious” are used to describe religious people. Just because a doctor does not want to prescribe birth control, it does not make him sanctimonious.
As far as the OP is concerned, I think he or she is being very smart to consider this matter. It really doesn’t matter what you think the public’s perception of the medical profession should be; the question is, what are these perceptions, and why are they held? As far as the Catholic perspective is concerned, the fact that a doctor is an athiest isn’t the problem; the problem is the doctor is not Catholic. It’s not that Catholics have some weird prejudice against athiests, or any other religion for that matter, in the sense that you believe they won’t provide the proper standard of care. Someone’s lack of religion would most likely have no bearing on hiring an athiest to work on your car, do your taxes, etc. The point is that religious Catholics have a deep reverence for life, and the way this is defined in the medical arena is very specific: No abortion, no IVF, no euthanasia. A religious Catholic would not want to support a medical practice that performs these types of procedures because this is equivilant to supporting murder.
Not at all. Just that you shouldn’t join a practice where abortions are performed, nor should you attempt to stop your patient from getting one unless you feel it would impair her physical health. Leave the health of her soul out of it.
And, patients who have no alternative for care? Should they be denied birth control that is legal, available, not a threat to their health, and covered by their insurance just because the only doctor in a thirty mile radius is imposing his moral judgements on his patients?
Judgemental, sanctimonious, take your pick. Moral judgements on someone else’s behalf are just that. By all means, if birth control is against your moral code, don’t use it. But those people who do not share your beliefs shouldn’t be made to suffer because of them. You cannot force others to live by your moral code.
Well, obviously a doctor who doesn’t want to perform abortions should not join a practice that does them. And no one said ANYTHING about “stopping a patient from getting one.” How would a doctor even do this? Lock the patient up in his office?
Of course, a doctor would have to have a reasonably available referral.
It has nothing to do with being judgemental or sanctimonious. It has nothing to do with making the moral choice for the PATIENT. A physician is neither neither judgemental nor sanctimonius of these if he or she says, “I am sorry, I do not prescribe birth control. If you need a doctor who does, here is the name of a doctor for you.” This does not cause anyone to suffer, and it certainly does not force anyone to live by your moral code.
Unfortunately, for many rural patients, it does. Especially if that patient participates in an HMO. That patient is then required to obtain a referral to see an out of area physician (there are limits with some plans as to how far away you can go for care without precertification) and then justify that. It places a hardship on the patient that shouldn’t be there.
I agree. I wouldn’t change my approach in this example though I’d be sensitive to what I discerned was the families’ phylosophy on the issue.
My example was meant to highlight that a conservative Christian family might be uncomforfortable with my advice on certain issues; particularly when it’s less cut and dry. A common scenario for me is recommending oral contraceptives to teenage girls with acne. Oral contraceptives are not the only treatment for acne but serve as an effective adjuvant. Religious and non-religious families alike are uncomfortable with this topic; perhaps more so the religious families.
I would not provided their religion wasn’t in my face. But, as a physician, I’m a more educated consumer of health care: it’s different for patients in the “Well, you’re the Doc, I’ll do what you think’s best” camp.
The idea was if I became known in my community as an atheist would you still come to see me? I don’t think it has significant bearing on my practice-and I’m gratified seeing the many respondents to this thread that agree.
Ah. Yes, so sorry for the derailling. :o
No, in case the previous posts haven’t given it away, so long as you’re a good doctor and treat me and my family at a high level of care, I don’t care if you worship the small blue lump of putty you pulled from your belly button.
) I came on this thread to try to explain the Catholic viewpoint about doctors and medical ethics. I tried to do it (at first, anyway), in a way that was simply informative and non-judgemental either way. For my trouble, I was argued with and called ignorant. I’m sure you can understand my annoyance.
(I can’t help but grin since I had my own “six weeks tun up” this afternoon. The mental image of The Good Doctor levitating to the strains of sitar music is delightful!)