If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.
Navajo students whose beliefs forbid them from touching dead bodies need not forgo pursuing careers in medicine; some medical school administrators are teaching anatomy without cadavers.
Nancy Berlinger, PhD and Annalise Berlinger, BSN, RN
Physicians’ reliance on “culture” to explain patients’ noncompliance may serve as code for their discomfort with difference, uncertainty, and distress.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(6):608-616. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.msoc1-1706.
A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
Even if they are not sick, people in quarantine are still patients; the physician is responsible for their well-being and may find that it is necessary to advocate for them.
Immigrant patients are often bewildered when they need to seek health care in the U.S., and that care usually comes from physicians who are unsympathetic to their plight.