Research has been found saying that one out of five primary care physicans face conflict in religiously affiliated hospitals. When caring for their patients, end-of-life care, abortion and other practices may be restricted.
"Religious Hospitals represent nearly 20 percent of our health care system," says Dr. Debra Stulberg, "Yet we know little about how religious policy affect the care doctors give to their patients."
Researchers surveyed 446 doctors with a specific question. The question was, What should a physicans do if a patient needed an intervention the hospital barred due to its religious practices? Fourty-three percent of the 446 doctors actually worked in a religiously affiliated hospitals. Doctors were also asked to weigh in four ethical scenarios. The scenarios were, Should they provide an intervention openly whatever the risk, or intervene discreetly to avoid getting fired or losing their priviledges at the facility? and a couple other scenarios. In the end, 96 percent agreed that doctors should follow hospital policy.
My opinion on this article is that even though research shows that majority of doctors who work in religiously affiliated hospitals face conflict with the hospitals policy that they should adhere to the policy no matter the situation. They chose the hospital they would work at so why are they complaining? They knew there would be restrictions on certain procedures. They should have been prepared for conflict, rather than resisting it when conflict arose. I believe that if doctors dont believe in the same morals or even religion then they should not choose to work there. What do they want to accomplish there if they dont agree with the hospital? Do they think they can change the standards or policy? And if they choose to work at a religiously affiliated hospital and "have" the same morals and then find conflict with not being able to do certain procedures, then maybe they dont have the same morals as the hospital.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/14/doctors-report-religious-conflict-at-hospitals/?page=1
1 comment:
I agree that they should follow the hospital's procedure because they chose to work there. However, these doctors have been trained to know what to do in the state of an emergency and when we go to a hospital we trust the doctor's judgement if that time comes. When it comes to saving someone's life, I think that the doctor should do everything possible to make it happen, as long as they have permission from the patient or the patient's family.
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