MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
“The College is committed to doing all it can to ensure patients are protected
from sexual abuse by physicians, and that those who have experienced
abuse are supported in coming forward to report it.”
Preventing Sexual Abuse, and
earlier Council discussion. Please
participate in our consultation at
www.cpso.on.ca and let us know
what you think of our approach.
We have also determined that
changes should be made to our
governing legislation, the Regulated
Health Professions Act, to better protect patients and at our most recent
meeting, Council endorsed several
proposals.
What else are we doing? We are
exploring opportunities to expand
the education of trainees, physicians, College staff, and our committee members. We are looking
at our own processes to determine
how to optimize our decision-making. We are putting more information on our website to empower
patients to come forward, including
those patients who do not speak
English. We are also developing a
Rights and Responsibilities document for patients that would focus
on the duties and obligations that
physicians owe their patients. We
also want more feedback about the
patient experience, so we have created a survey for patients who have
been involved in our investigative/
discipline processes, to help us learn
6
Dialogue Issue 2, 2015
from them how to make things
even better.
We are also assessing our practice
of imposing gender-based restrictions (GBR) on a physician’s certificate of registration. The College has
used these restrictions to provide
public protection in the context of
ongoing investigations or discipline
findings of sexual abuse, boundary violations and/or other sexual
misconduct by physicians dating
back to at least 1993. At its meeting
in September 2015, Council will be
presented with an analysis on the
use of GBRs and asked for direction
as to whether the College should
continue to rely upon GBRs, and if
so, in what circumstances.
As you can see, our work in this
initiative is well underway and I
will keep you up to date on our
progress in these pages. But I can
assure you that the College is committed to doing all it can to ensure
patients are protected from sexual
abuse by physicians, and that those
who have experienced abuse are
supported in coming forward to
report it.