Radlicz, C. M., & Fernandes, A. K. (2019). Physician Conscience and Patient Autonomy: Are They Competing Interests? The Linacre quarterly, 86(1), 139-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0024363919832760
Radlicz CM, Fernandes AK. Physician Conscience and Patient Autonomy: Are They Competing Interests? The Linacre quarterly. 2019;86(1):139-141. doi:10.1177/0024363919832760
Radlicz, Christopher M., and Ashley K. Fernandes. "Physician Conscience and Patient Autonomy: Are They Competing Interests?" The Linacre quarterly, vol. 86, no. 1, 2019, pp. 139-141.
Authors Argue Patient Autonomy Does Not Override Conscience
This is a short opinion piece. Two bioethics writers answer a reader's question in a Catholic doctors' group journal. They argue a patient's wishes should not automatically override a doctor's moral belief. Conscience and patient choice, they say, are not simply rivals.
Key Findings
The authors argue conscience is intrinsic to who a doctor is. They say a doctor should not set it aside at work as if it were a mere preference.
They argue patient choice is not absolute. If it were, they say, a doctor would become a technician who just carries out requests.
They argue a treatment being legal does not make it good. Some once-legal practices are now widely condemned.
They argue medical training often discourages trainees from speaking up, which they call a loss for patients and the field.
The authors describe the doctor-patient bond as a covenant of mutual respect. They contrast it with a contract for services.
Interpretation
This is an argument piece. The piece has no data, no sample, and no method. Instead, it uses reasoning and short hypothetical cases to make its point. The authors cite other bioethics writers, including Daniel Sulmasy, Edmund Pellegrino, and Leon Kass. They also respond to a published view that a doctor unwilling to give legal, requested care should leave medicine. The piece ran in the Linacre Quarterly, a journal of the Catholic Medical Association. The writers are a medical student and an associate professor of pediatrics who helps direct a bioethics center. Read it as one side of a debate. The paper does not document what happens in real clinics.
RRM Context
Restorative reproductive medicine clinicians sometimes decline to give or refer for care that does not fit how they understand the body. One example is a referral for IVF. This paper treats a doctor's conscience as part of who they are. Conscience-based ethics is one lens such choices can sit inside. The paper itself does not discuss restorative reproductive medicine.
Our editorial summary of this paper, not the article's abstract.
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