Reframing the professional ethic: the Council of Medical Specialty Societies consensus statement on the ethic of medicine.

Abstract

“Ethics makes us more critical of what we are doing—to bring us back daily to thinking about what it is to be a good doctor.”1(p38) Physicians are finding it difficult to apply ethical principles in an environment in which the views of their responsibilities are constantly shifting. Clinical decision making, the core of medical work, is influenced by competing interests, including those that are sometimes critical to physicians' livelihood. Does some common purpose remain in medical work that provides direction toward balancing these interests and clarifying physicians' responsibilities? Traditional medical ethics, as embodied in the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics (hereafter, the AMA Code of Ethics), has served as an ethical guide since the mid-1840s and has focused on physicians' responsibility to individual patients.2 But the code fails to address other physician obligations adequately, such as providing universal access to health care and preventive services. Many observers, therefore, have called for a new ethic.3,4,5,6