Physician organizations have an ethical obligation to advocate for general improvement of public health, even if it is sometimes at the expense of interests of medical professionals.
Refusals of psychotropic medication by detained criminal defendants raise conflicting dual loyalties for psychiatrists between the duty to treat a patient and the duty to protect society from that patient.
Dr Kelly Gillespie joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Taleed El-Sabawi: “When Medication Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder Gets Disrupted by Extra-Clinical Variables, How Should Clinicians Respond?”
Physicians need to exhaust every possible alternative to bring about political changes before resorting to breaking the law as an act of civil disobedience.