Protecting the Sanctity of the Patient-Physician Relationship

In this issue of JAMA, Wynia describes a patient in Colorado with terminal cancer for whom a physician agreed to prescribe aid-in-dying medications in accordance with new state legal guidelines. However, the health care organization that employed the physician objected to her actions, even though by doing so it was violating state law. The patient and physician filed suit against her employer. Chillingly, in a move that should alarm physicians long concerned about erosion of their autonomy, the physician ’s dismissal letter chided her for violating the ethical directives of Catholic health care services, which view assisted suicide as “intrinsically immoral” and state that “Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering.”
Source: JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research