The Practice Guide
VALUES OF THE PROFESSION
Compassion
Individual doctors serve their patients by assessing,
diagnosing and treating patients, and through rehabilitation and habilitation, palliation, health promotion, and disease prevention. However, medicine is
more than procedures and physicians are more than
purveyors of technology. Compassion is fundamental to the relationship between the patient and the
doctor. Compassion is defined as a deep awareness
of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to
relieve it.
Service
Service means working for the benefit of another.
Doctors in Ontario are dedicated to serving their
patients.
To serve their patients, physicians must be competent in the medical areas in which they practice.
Competence requires the application of current
knowledge with requisite skill and judgment needed
to meet the patient’s medical needs. In this, physicians should strive for excellence.
Service is not only competence; it is also putting the
patient first. A physician has professional responsibility to their patients, individually and collectively;
their patients’ families; their own practice; and the
health care system. However, at any given time a
physician’s primary responsibility is to the individual
patient before them.
Physicians, as a profession, also have a collective
responsibility to the public, which is demonstrated
by collaborating with and supporting colleagues
and other health professionals, and participating in
self-regulation in the public interest. The profession
has a critical responsibility to the public as a whole
via its responsibility to regulate. Just as doctors
serve patients, the College, as the representative of
the profession in self-regulation, has the ethical and
statutory responsibility to serve the public by regulating physicians in the public interest.
Altruism
Altruism, as a principle of action, is the highest commitment to service. Altruism in medicine is defined
as practising unselfishly and with a regard for others.
Patients’ needs are paramount and must be considered before the individual physician’s needs, the
needs of physicians as a group, or the public as a
whole. This is not to say that physicians must sacrifice
their health or other important aspects of their life
for their patients. Rather, it means that when providing care to a patient, a physician should always put
that patient first.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness is the cornerstone of the practice
of medicine. It is the demonstration of compassion,
service and altruism that earns the medical profession the trust of the public. This trust manifests itself
in the social contract between the profession and
the public, as well as the relationship an individual
patient has with his or her doctor.
Maintaining trust is an important aspect of medical
professionalism. Patients must be able to trust that
the physician will always uphold the values of the
profession; in the absence of the trusting relationship the physician cannot help the patient and the
patient cannot benefit from the relationship.
Overarching principles of practice flow from the
values articulated above. The principles of practice,
in turn, ground the specific duties of the individual
physician.
Physicians accepted into practice in Ontario meet
a standard of excellence in education and performance. Patients trust their physicians to be clinically
competent in all areas of their practice. However,
Welcome to the College – May 2016
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