Religious people in the medical field

[onlinebiker]

I don' t have a problem with my doctor being religious in much the same way as I don' t care if he has a deformed penis.


In both cases it' s not a problem unless he tries sticking it in my face.

[Belacqua]

The point  being religious physicians aren't the only ones who help others.

Nor would I ever claim that they are. Obviously, non-religious people have done and continue to do good around the world. 

But I disagree with the claim that people's religion is in most cases a hindrance to their doing good.

[The Valkyrie]

The point  being religious physicians aren't the only ones who help others.

Nor would I ever claim that they are. Obviously, non-religious people have done and continue to do good around the world. 

But I disagree with the claim that people's religion is in most cases a hindrance to their doing good.

Not in many cases, no.

But there are those who use their religious belief to refuse treatment for vaious reasons.

The safety and welfare of the patients comes first. If you can't accept that then you need to find another career.

[brewer]

That's all well and good....................... until you have an emergency where you can't pick and choose. Medicine needs to come before religion and/or politics.

I think this law is still in effect: https://nurse.org/articles/trump-gives-h...rotection/

This is definitely news to me, and if I understand this correctly, this is opening a door to some pretty bone-headed ideas. I kind of got this mixed feeling of disgust that such a department would be created, and a sense that it's hard to get mad at the grocery store for not selling bullets; it's just not what they're in the business for. In terms of emergencies, I don't accept from my current understanding that anyone would find themselves in a situation where they'd need emergency sterilization or an emergency sexual reassignment procedure. They most certainly can find themselves in a position where they can require an emergency abortion.

Where I'm from, hospitals are either secular, Jewish or some denomination of Christianity. Private entities make their own rules and they decide what the moral standards are for medical practice. Patients may choose their provider and power always rests with the customers (patients) to cease going to religiously affiliated hospitals and seek their treatment elsewhere.

I'm not immediately opposed to doctors choosing not to perform elective procedures whether its because they're morally opposed to them or because they have selected not to undergo the necessary training to competently perform such procedures. I think that's something that the public should sway by choosing which doctors they go to. An excellent way to convey this message to doctors and hospitals is to not seek treatment with them.

... unless they're the only ones with the cure, of course.

An example of an emergency could be something like aids related pneumocystis pneumonia, post op complications from a surgery, a trans person with a burst appendix...............................

I'm not sure where you live but in the rural communities in my neck of the woods there is usually only one advanced care/emergency provider for hundreds of miles. They usually have a limited staff, very limited for nights and weekends (one doctor). These small communities are also very religious. Not to beat a dead horse (whack whack) but it's not the association of the hospital (xter/jewish/....) but the beliefs of the individual. 

I find it very disturbing that the US christian agenda has opened this door. Not very Samaritan of them huh Luke.

---

Got it.

Until we live in a communist utopia, politics will be a part of medical questions. Not all medical issues are self-evident -- different consciences may disagree. 

My point about not outlawing religious objection to medical decisions is that it works fine for us now, while we're talking about those evil right-wingers. But future cases may involve good and pure left-wingers objecting to right-wing decrees.

So for example, a relative of mine goes to a liberal Christian church in the midwest. Her pastor views it as an injunction from the New Testament to welcome immigrants to the USA. If the law restricted medical attention given to immigrants, that pastor would have to disobey it due to his religious conscience. And I would approve of his doing so. 

So we have to ask whether we're against religious objections based on conscience, or we're against religious objections based on consciences that we disagree with.

Just so you know, I'm a republican. I get your point, my position is that there are some places where decisions based on religion do not belong. Medicine is one of them. I value life over religion. You should also. And it should be non debatable.

[Brian37]

There are more than one would realize, and it is sickening.

The number of nurses, especially.  (I work with them)  

And doctors are not exempt either.  I accompanied one patient to a veteran's appointment.  The Asian doctor had biblical scripture on her wall.

SMDH.

Doctors exist in every religion worldwide so like our general population it would still remain, doctor or not, most humans hold some sort of religious position.

There are Muslim doctors, Hindu doctors, Jewish doctors, and Buddhist doctors. That says to me, our species ability to be compassionate isn't coming from the writings of antiquity, but our evolutionary empathy.

Both Ben Carson and Sam Harris are neurologists. That also says to me the science is independent of any religion. If only one religion owned a patent on science and scientific method proved one religion over another, there would be no dispute.

But the higher up you go in scientific field, say to the Hawking's level, the less religious there are on average.

[Angrboda]

Currently we're talking about religious objections to good procedures. Everybody on this forum agrees, I think: we don't want certain people to refuse to do things because their consciences object.

We have to be careful about what kind of laws we demand, though. If Trump makes it illegal to deliver "anchor babies" or sell medicine to people who don't carry proof of citizenship, then conscientious objection to those laws will be necessary. So we don't want to find that we've accidentally thrown those people in jail.

Civil disobedience carries with it the risk of consequences. It would be unwise to justify granting special rights to people simply to hope that people who engage in civil disobedience get a pass when the time comes. All that's doing is endorsing harm to make life for people who are objectively breaking the law easier. If people who conscientiously object deserve special consideration then they do so on its own merits, not simply because we want a tit for tat with something we are in favor of. That's not a reasonable justification.