Jeffrey Blustein
Extract
Conclusion
Physicians’ appeals to conscience, understood as fear of loss of integrity, should not be taken lightly. Integrity provides the basis for a unified, whole, and unalienated life, and its moral value, while dependent on the presence of other good traits in the agent, is not reducible to them. . . a physician can consistently be concerned about his or her own integrity without claiming to know better than the patient what is in the patient’s best interests. . . . The conception of integrity I have proposed . . . allows for the possibility of integrity-preserving compromise. . . . I have also considered the common practice of patient referral from the standpoint of physician integrity, and asked whether a physician who refuses to treat a patient as a matter of conscience can consistently refer the patient to another physician for the same treatment. . . in a dispute between physicians and their patients, there may be other values and principles at stake than the ones expressed in their conflicting positions, and a physician might well decide that referral in such a case is an appropriate response to a morally complex situation.
Blustein J. Doing what the Patient Orders: Maintaining Integrity in the Doctor-Patient Relationship. Bioethics. 1993;7(4):289-314.