INDEPENDENCE OF DOCTORS IN PROVIDING MEDICAL ASSISTANCE TO PERSONS DEPRIVED FROM LIBERTY

Abstract

Building an effective healthcare system and providing quality patient care is a main priority for the international community and European countries. Achieving this priority requires active behavior on the part of all actors in the health care system - state and municipal authorities, health care providers, medical professionals, and taking adequate and appropriate measures. Part of these measures should be aimed at improving access to medical care for all citizens, overcoming health inequalities between social groups, and ensuring an appropriate environment in which doctors can effectively exercise their professional rights. In this sense, guaranteeing the right to independence of doctors and their right to personal freedom in providing medical assistance and medical care to patients is an extremely important obligation for any rule of law and democracy governed countries. This situation is conditioned by the fact that the full realization of the professional rights of doctors is one of the basic prerequisites for the delivery of quality medical care and for the protection of patients' health rights. The exceptional importance of the right to the independence of doctors and their right to personal professional freedom has been recognized in a number of international universal and regional instruments and in the domestic law of European countries. When providing health care under normal conditions, healthcare professionals do not have the serious difficulty of being independent and to make their own decisions regarding the diagnosis and treatment of patients. However, this is not the case in prisons and arrest, where the activities of doctors, their independence and professional freedom are in practice limited by the adopted structural models and the normatively established organizational rules. Admitting this trend is unacceptable. It has a negative impact, on the one hand, on the ability of doctors to pursue their profession, guided solely by their conscience and the rules of medical ethics, and, on the other, on the effective exercise of the right to health and the related health rights of persons deprived from liberty. Last but not least, limiting the independence of physicians in the provision of medical care to persons deprived from liberty has implications for the physician-patient relationship that should be built on the basis of mutual trust, respect and cooperation. This article will look at international standards that guarantee the right to independence of doctors, their manifestation in the practice of medical care in prisons and in arrest, and the factors that lead to the limitation of that right.