Bernard M Dickens
Abstract
The duty of referral that objecting physicians owe their patients, and that hospitals owe members of the communities they serve, requires identification of and patients’ reasonable access to physicians (or other qualified health service providers) able and willing to undertake the lawful procedures that objectors find offensive. Referral must be made in good faith, since objecting physicians cannot ethically or lawfully practise deception or evasion to compel their patients’ involuntary compliance with objectors’ own religious or moral beliefs.
Dickens BM. Conscientious Objection and Professionalism. Expert Rev Obstet Gynec. 2009;4(2):97-100.