Interesting. Apparently vetbridge is damned both for treating animals and for euthanizing animals.
Pretty tenuous to connect the niece’s erroneous expectation of priviledge to the issue of public welfare. I don’t see it. As for ‘protecting’ the welfare of the client by withholding information: that’s a big ethical no-no, too. I imagine that it would be easy to justify all sorts of lies to clients if you felt that you could do it ‘for their own good’.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Hey, speculation is fun! I choose to believe that the letter was full of hateful statements about what a bitch the aunt was for not saving her money so the niece could inherit it, and that the aunt specifically asked whether the niece had sent such a letter, and that vetbridge turned the letter over only after much agonizing soul-searching. Just because one disagrees with the chosen action does not mean that the decision was undertaken lightly.
You aren’t the client or patient! You have no reason or basis by which to expect your correspondence about your aunt to her physician to remain confidential or to be withheld from her!
Zoe, any veternarian who even suggests a diagnosis of mental illness in a human is creating a far worse breach of ethics than passing along a slanderous note from a relative of a client. He is not a (human) medical doctor - he is not licensed to diagnose or treat humans. Somewhere in the state code is a requirement that he not work outside of the scope of his practice, and diagnosing mental illness is WAY outside the scope of a veternarian’s practice.
Can he place a call to the local police or animal shelter if he suspects abuse or animal collecting? Absolutely, and given his posts on the board, I’m convinced he would. But his specialized knowledge begins and ends at animal health and the impact animal health has on the community. After that, he’s no more bound to get embroiled in family drama than the cashier at Wal-Mart who privately thinks some old lady is spending way too much money on gardening supplies.
I won’t touch the euthanasia problem. If you don’t see how killing an animal quickly and painlessly is caring more for their physical welfare than encouraging clients to shoot, strangle, drown or abandon them, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
In medicine, animal or human, you can’t afford to “ignore” anything. The letter being delivered to him effectively put him on notice that there was a dispute brewing about his client’s judgement. If Vetbridge was my veterinarian and he withheld information like that from me while he was treating my pets, I might well see that as a violation of professional trust and his duties toward me as his client.
If you’re involved even peripherally, in a legal dispute and you start getting court orders for release of documents (as Vetbridge indicated he has received in the past) it changes your world view on how casual you can afford to be with information, and especially accusatory letters that are putting you on notice of this or that opinion.
The dichotomy of the situation is kind of odd here. You want him to be casual and dismissive of the import of the letter questioning his client’s mental abilities and withhold it from his client, and on the other hand you want get out a micrometer to dissect how precisely he should be interpolating his ethical duties in the everyday IRL scrum of dealing with emotional patients and their animals.
He’s a man trying to do a difficult job the best he can, in an environment that can be legally perilous if he withholds information from his client or starts playing around with professional confidences. He’s a hardworking Veterinarian, not an omniscient God who can read every ones mind and discern every ones motivations.
Great post Why Not. There are some states in which Veterinarians are obligated to report suspected child abuse ( as are teachers, social workers, and a ton of other non-doctors) but that’s the end of their right or obligation to diagnose human conditions. All the protect the community and human health verbage in the oaths directly refers to prevention of zoonotic disease and ensuring a wholesome food supply.
Veterinarians are told in vet school over and over again NOT to dispense medical advise of any form to humans. As a veterinarian who is employed at a veterinary school, however, I can assure you that veterinary ethics are covered in a required couse, but they are not discussed all that much after that. One hopes they are modeled by the clinicians, but little is said explicitely.
Last week I was called by a person who had injected himself with a medication labeled for horses. He was worried about side effects and was told BY HIS DOCTOR to call a veterinarian to find out what he should do now. I informed him that I could give no medical advise at all and the he’d have to call back his doctor or find another physician to talk to.
The euthanasia on demand issue is fairly hot in veterinary medicine. There are some vet.s who do it without blinking an eye. Perhaps they think that if they don’t do it, the animals will suffer. There are other vets who see killing healthy animals as outside what they are willing to do and will not. Taking this back to humans - it’s not like doctors are happy to give lethal injections to death row inmates because if they don’t the inmates will just get killed in a less humane fashion. Some doctors won’t participate and they really don’t see it as their problem if the inmate has to die in a less pleasant manner.
No. I have no idea how the practical implementation of ethical standards in the vet profession shake out. It’s far from clear to me that paragraph 2(a), which you quote above, clearly prohibits the action vetbridge took. I’d be very interested in seeing, for example, a cite of a vet censured as a result of similar actions, or a post from another vet indicating that the action was clearly violative of the professional standards vets must uphold.
In the legal profession, for whatever it’s worth, disclosure of the letter would have been appropriate.
If the best support for your position that vetbridge violated the ethical rules of his profession is a vague cite to amorphous standards of “service to society,” then you have done a piss-poor job of supporting your position.
Since when is he obligated to share information from an outside party? He has no proof that the woman really was her niece. He can keep that information to himself and use it as reference when dealing with the customer, but he has no obligation to share a private correspondence with anyone.
Again…he has no proof that the niece even WAS her niece, and so what if she was? Maybe she was pissed off because all her inheritence was going to the vet instead of to her. If she wants to talk to someone about her aunt’s mental health, a lawyer and psychologist should represent her. He had no business passing that info on.
The question is not if he is obligated to share the information – it is whether the decision to share the information is a violation of his ethical obligations.
If vetbridge had any reason to believe that the letter-writer was NOT the niece, it seems that there would be more reason to report the letter to the client - in a ‘someone is writing letters claiming that you are crazy and it seems like you should know about it’ way.
I don’t have to be a vet to know that a letter from a supposedly concerned supposed relative would have nothing to do with the doctor/patient/client relationship I have going with someone. If she was taking legal steps to take control of her aunt’s business, she would have been represented by a lawyer or at least some legal documentation. I have no reason to believe she was her niece. Using that information in further decision-making with the client would be one thing. Passing the information on is another thing altogether.
I don’t get it. It seems that his ignorance as to the family setup makes it more appropriate to pass the letter on. The person, whether niece or not, was trying to sneak around behind Little Old Lady’s back. Such a sneak has zero claim to confidentiality. After all, the sneak is violating the LOL’s trust by writing to the vet.
Imagine if the manager at Kroger got a letter saying that Kalhoun was buying too many HoHos, and must be stopped. You’d be fine with the manager using that letter in decision-making about you, but not fine with the manager telling you about the letter? I think most of us would be the opposite. Don’t use some letter as a basis for judging me, and tell me that you got it so that I can protect myself.
For me, it would eat me up inside to look my client in the face, know that someone was saying negative things about her (in writing) and not share with her that she might want to watch her back and assets. Especially if I was editing the information I gave her about treatment options based on the information I had from a third party - it’s just not right, in my book. It would have a very definite impact on our doctor/patient/client relationship.
I think both are understandable points of view. **Vetbridge **might agree with me, or with you, or he might have a third take on it. I don’t think it’s worth it to try and change people’s point of view - either you feel oogy or you don’t. The point is, what should he, as bound by the ethics of his profession, do about it?
The answer is clear that the ethics of his profession say nothing about it at all. The ethics of his profession talk about how he should act around his patients (the animals) and his clients (the owners) and the public safety. The ethics of his profession do not say anything about family members of clients.
Since there is no professional guideline (or we have not been presented with evidence of a professional guideline in this thread), the answer can only come from personal ethics. **Vetbridge **acted in accordance with his personal ethics. While you may disagree with that decision, it had nothing to do with him not recognizing **professional **ethics.
Since the moment he entered into a professional relationship to serve as an agent for his client. It matters not about who it is from (niece, stranger, the pope, the IRS), it is about his client. Keeping it to himself and using it as a reference is entirely the wrong thing to do. It isn’t simply a “private correspondence” like some love letter from a stranger. It is information intended solely to affect his interactions with his client which he would not have received were he not acting on her behalf in the first place.
You haven’t at all addressed the ramifications on his professional practice when it is revealed to the aunt that he was in possession of the letter. Believe me, it is entirely likely in the midst of family conflict for such a thing to come to light.