Institutions (Hospitals, etc) Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Protection of Conscience Project Library

Managing conscientious objection in health care institutions

Mark R Wicclair

Abstract
It is argued that the primary aim of institutional management is to protect the moral integrity of health professionals without significantly compromising other important values and interests. Institutional policies are recommended as a means to promote fair, consistent, and transparent management of conscience-based refusals. It is further recommended that those policies include the following four requirements: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on colleagues, supervisors, department heads, other administrators, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. Formal review may not be required in all cases, but when it is appropriate, several recommendations are offered about standards and the review process. A key recommendation is that when reviewing an objector’s reasons, contrary to what some have proposed, it is not appropriate to adopt an adversarial approach modelled on military review boards’ assessments of requests for conscientious objector status. According to the approach recommended, the primary function of reviews of objectors’ reasons is to engage them in a process of reflecting on the nature and depth of their objections, with the objective of facilitating moral clarity on the part of objectors rather than enabling department heads, supervisors, or ethics committees to determine whether conscientious objections are sufficiently genuine.

Wicclair MR. Managing conscientious objection in health care institutions. HEC Forum. 2014;26(3):267-283.

Conscientious objection to harmful animal use within veterinary and other biomedical education

Andrew Knight

Abstract
Laboratory classes in which animals are seriously harmed or killed, or which use cadavers or body parts from ethically debatable sources, are controversial within veterinary and other biomedical curricula. Along with the development of more humane teaching methods, this has increasingly led to objections to participation in harmful animal use. Such cases raise a host of issues of importance to universities, including those pertaining to curricular design and course accreditation, and compliance with applicable animal welfare and antidiscrimination legislation. Accordingly, after detailed investigation, some universities have implemented formal policies to guide faculty responses to such cases, and to ensure that decisions are consistent and defensible from legal and other policy perspectives. However, many other institutions have not yet done so, instead dealing with such cases on an ad hoc basis as they arise. Among other undesirable outcomes this can lead to insufficient student and faculty preparation, suboptimal and inconsistent responses, and greater likelihood of legal challenge. Accordingly, this paper provides pertinent information about the evolution of conscientious objection policies within Australian veterinary schools, and about the jurisprudential bases for conscientious objection within Australia and the USA. It concludes with recommendations for the development and implementation of policy within this arena.

Knight A. Conscientious objection to harmful animal use within veterinary and other biomedical education. Animals. 2014 Jan 21;4(1):16-34.

Dignity, death, and dilemmas: A study of Washington hospices and physician-assisted death

Courtney S Campbell, Margaret A Black

Abstract
The legalization of physician-assisted death in states such as Washington and Oregon has presented defining ethical issues for hospice programs because up to 90% of terminally ill patients who use the state-regulated procedure to end their lives are enrolled in hospice care. The authors recently partnered with the Washington State Hospice and Palliative Care Organization to examine the policies developed by individual hospice programs on program and staff participation in the Washington Death with Dignity Act. This article sets a national and local context for the discussion of hospice involvement in physician-assisted death, summarizes the content of hospice policies in Washington State, and presents an analysis of these findings. The study reveals meaningful differences among hospice programs about the integrity and identity of hospice and hospice care, leading to different policies, values, understandings of the medical procedure, and caregiving practices. In particular, the authors found differences 1) in the language used by hospices to refer to the Washington statute that reflect differences among national organizations, 2) the values that hospice programs draw on to support their policies, 3) dilemmas created by requests by patients for hospice staff to be present at a patient’s death, and 4) five primary levels of noninvolvement and participation by hospice programs in requests from patients for physician-assisted death. This analysis concludes with a framework of questions for developing a comprehensive hospice policy on involvement in physician-assisted death and to assist national, state, local, and personal reflection.

Campbell CS, Black MA. Dignity, death, and dilemmas: A study of Washington hospices and physician-assisted death. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2014 Jan;47(1):137-153.

Institutional conscience and access to services: can we have both?

Cameron Flynn, Robin Fretwell Wilson

American Medical Association Journal of Ethics

Extract
It appears, at times, that health care and religion do not mix. Consider the sterilization and contraception coverage mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The mandate requires nearly all employers and health insurers to cover as “essential health care services” certain sterilization procedures and contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives. Members of the Catholic, evangelical Christian, Mennonite, and Muslim faith communities say that the mandate places them “in the untenable position of having to choose between violating the law and violating their consciences.”

Flynn C, Wilson RF. Institutional conscience and access to services: can we have both? Virtual Mentor. 2013;15(3):226-235. doi: 10.1001/virtualmentor.2013.15.3.pfor1-1303.

Protecting positive claims of conscience for employees of religious institutions threatens religious liberty

Christopher O. Tollefsen

Extract
An important good for doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals could be described as that of “professional freedom.” This is the good of being able to bring one’s professional medical knowledge and one’s commitments to the norms and values of the medical profession to bear on one’s professional judgments and actions. This is, after all, one of the important aspects of being in a profession: professionals are not merely technicians performing the same routine tasks over and over, nor are they functionaries, blindly carrying out orders from above with little or no discretion on their part. . .

Tollefson C. Protecting positive claims of conscience for employees of religious institutions threatens religious liberty. Virtual Mentor. 2013;15(3):236-239. doi: 10.1001/virtualmentor.2013.15.3.pfor2-1303.

Not Only the Doctor’s Dilemma: The Complexity of Conscience in Medicine

Elizabeth Sepper

Abstract
In recent years, conscience has become a national catch phrase, invoked regularly in health policy discussions. The word “conscience,” however, often stands in for refusal to deliver abortions or contraception or to remove or withhold life support.

In this talk, I argue that conscience is not so one-sided, nor medical decisionmaking so straightforward. First, medical decisions – especially those involving questions of life and death – inspire divergent moral convictions. Second, medical decisions do not simply implicate conscience for the provider. They should be thought of instead as involving, at minimum, three parties: patients, providers, and institutions. This three-sided relationship complicates moral decisionmaking, with each party asserting potentially conflicting claims.

I contend that in responding to conflicts over medical decisions, lawmakers have overlooked their complexity. As a result, existing legislation undermines conscience, risks harm to patients, and destabilizes ethical decisionmaking within medicine itself. The talk concludes with several proposals to improve the law’s approach to morality in medicine.

Sepper E. Not Only the Doctor’s Dilemma: The Complexity of Conscience in Medicine. 4 Faulkner L. Rev. 385, 406 (2013)

A clear case for conscience in healthcare practice

Giles Birchley

Abstract
The value of conscience in healthcare ethics is widely debated. While some sources present it as an unquestionably positive attribute, others question both the veracity of its decisions and the effect of conscientious objection on patient access to health care. This paper argues that the right to object conscientiously should be broadened, subject to certain provisos, as there are many benefits to healthcare practice in the development of the consciences of practitioners. While effects such as the preservation of moral integrity are widely considered to benefit practitioners, this paper draws on the work of Hannah Arendt to offer several original arguments in defence of conscience that may more directly benefit patients, namely that a pang of conscience may be useful in rapidly unfolding situations in which there is no time to reflect satisfactorily upon activities and that, given the hierarchical nature of healthcare institutions, a right to defy authority on the basis of conscience may benefit junior staff who lack the institutional power to challenge the orders of superiors.

Birchley G. A clear case for conscience in healthcare practice. J Med Ethics. 2012;38(1):13-17.

Just how much do medicine and morals mix: catholic hospitals and the potential effects of the Freedom of Choice Act

Carolyn Wendel

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

Extract
Conclusion
It is undeniable that Catholic hospitals play a pivotal role in the administration of health care in America. The requirement that they follow both federal law and canon law can, however, create conflicting obligations. If FOCA were to pass, Catholic hospitals would be required under federal law to provide abortions and other reproductive services in direct conflict with Catholic teachings. At the same time, because the Catholic Church would view FOCA as an unjust law operating against human good and divine good, Catholic hospitals would also have a moral obligation under church teachings to disobey the provisions of FOCA.

Unable to sell because of their inability to cooperate in an evil act, Catholic hospitals would likely engage in civil disobedi ence. And yet, such tactics would only work for so long. Suits would be brought and courts would almost certainly uphold FOCA as a valid and neutral law that is generally applicable. Despite what many would like to believe, FOCA poses a very real and imminent threat to the existence of Catholic hospitals. And the effect least talked about and yet most important is not what effect such closing would have on the Church itself, but what effect it would have on the 92 million patients that Catholic hospitals treat annually. The effects of FOCA passing and Catholic hospitals closing would be much more than a victory for the pro- choice advocates; it would be a loss to every person who has ever received treatment at a Catholic hospital and to all those who would be denied such services in the future. Perhaps we should take a cue from the medical profession itself and remember above all else: first, do no harm

Wendel C. Just how much do medicine and morals mix: catholic hospitals and the potential effects of the Freedom of Choice Act. Notre Dame J Law Ethics Pub Pol. 2011;25(2):663-688.

Conscientious refusals by hospitals and emergency contraception

Mark R Wicclair

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics

Journal’s Extract
Hospitals sometimes refuse to provide goods and services or honor patients’ decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment for reasons that appear to resemble appeals to conscience. For example, based on the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD), Catholic hospitals have refused to forgo medically provided nutrition and hydration (MPNH), and Catholic hospitals have refused to provide emergency contraception (EC) and perform abortions or sterilization procedures. I consider whether it is justified to refuse to offer EC to victims of sexual assault who present at the emergency department (ED). A preliminary question, however, is whether a hospital’s refusal to provide services can be conceptualized as conscience based.

Wicclair MR. Conscientious refusals by hospitals and emergency contraception. Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 2011;20(1):130-138.

The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses: “Freedom of Conscience” Versus Institutional Accommodation

Michael J. White

Abstract:
The phrase “freedom of conscience” is, of course, not to be found in the United States Constitution: the First Amendment says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” However, it seems probable that one, then-contemporary Protestant conception of freedom of conscience was presupposed in these two clauses. Evidence for this conjecture can be found not only in the debate and proposals concerning the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution but also in the frequently more expansive language of early state constitutions.

White MJ. The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses: “Freedom of Conscience” Versus Institutional Accommodation. 47 San Diego L. Rev. 1075 (2010).