Principles OF THE American Medical ADOPTED BY THE House of Delegates AT ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION PRESS B 4725 A51 1912 PRINCIPLES OF MEDICAL ETHICS CHAPTER I The Duties of Physicians to Their Patients THE PHYSICIAN'S RESPONSIBILITY SECTION 1.-A profession has for its prime object the service it can render to humanity; reward or financial gain should be a subordinate consideration. The practice of medicine is a profession. In choosing this profession an individual assumes an obligation to conduct himself in accord with its ideals. PATIENCE, DELICACY AND SECRECY SEC. 2.-Patience and delicacy should characterize all the acts of a physician. The confidences concerning individual or domestic life entrusted by a patient to a physician, and the defects of disposition or flaws of character observed in patients during medical attendance should be held as a trust and should never be revealed except when imperatively required by the laws of the state. There are occasions, however, when a physician must determine whether 32104 or not his duty to society requires him to take definite action to protect a healthy individual from becoming infected, because the physician has knowledge, obtained through the confidences entrusted to him as a physician, of a communicable disease to which the healthy individual is about to be exposed. In such a case, the physician should act as he would desire another to act toward one of his own family under like circumstances. Before he determines his course, the physician should know the civil law of his commonwealth concerning privileged communications. PROGNOSIS SEC. 3.-A physician should give timely notice of dangerous manifestations of the disease to the friends of the patient. He should neither exaggerate nor minimize the gravity of the patient's condition. He should assure himself that the patient or his friends have such knowledge of the patient's condition as will serve the best interests of the patient and the family. PATIENTS MUST NOT BE NEGLECTED SEC. 4.—A physician is free to choose whom he will serve. He should, however, always respond to any request for his assistance in an emergency or whenever temperate public opinion expects the service. Once having undertaken a case, a physician should not abandon or neglect the patient because the disease is deemed incurable; nor should he withdraw from the case for any reason until a sufficient notice of a desire to be released has been given the patient or his friends to make it possible for them to secure another medical attendant. |