Queer Patients and the Health Care Professional—Regulatory Arrangements Matter

Abstract

This paper discusses a number of critical ethical problems that arise in interactions between queer patients and health care professionals attending them. Using real-world examples, we discuss the very practical problems queer patients often face in the clinic. Health care professionals face conflicts in societies that criminalise same sex relationships. We also analyse the question of what ought to be done to confront health care professionals who propagate falsehoods about homosexuality in the public domain. These health care professionals are more often than not motivated by strong religious convictions that conflict with mainstream medical opinion on homosexuality. We argue that they ought to be held accountable for their conduct by their professional statutory bodies, given that they abuse their professional standing to propagate sectarian views not representative of their profession. Lastly, we propose that medical schools have special responsibilities in training future health care professionals that will enable them to respond professionally to queer patients seeking health care.

¿Es defendible la objeción de conciencia institucional en el caso de aborto?

“…Esto altera el equilibrio en esta relación porque los prestadores no están considerando los juicios morales que hacen las mujeres 114 . Los objetores tienen derecho a subvertir los roles en la relación al priorizar sus creencias o principios privados sobre los servicios, en particular cuando son "proveedores monopolistas" 115 . Los objetores pueden desestabilizar la relación con los pacientes al alterar ciertos deberes de la profesión como el no hacer daño 116 y el respetar la autonomía del paciente 117 , y finalmente poner en peligro la confianza en la que se basa la profesión médica 118 .…”

When medical professionalism and culture or the law collide: Gay patients in homophobic societies

“…Health care professionals value judgments about the lifestyles that patients live should not affect the care that they receive; anything else would arguably constitute unprofessional conduct, because of the likely negatively impacts on the delivery of health care. 7 Incidentally, this isn't a statement that is merely true vis-à-vis queer patients, it is true for all patients. Overweight patients, for instance, have long complained about the effects of weight discrimination in health care settings, and the harmful impacts of that discrimination on the quality of the health care that they received.…”

On the Ethics of Using Non‐Certified Health ‘Remedies’ in Resource Poor Contexts

“…A different example: other activists reportedly traveled from the USA to virulently anti‐gay Jamaica to ‘heal’ gay Jamaicans and turn them into heterosexuals . Vulnerable Jamaicans were subjected to treatments that are known not to work.…”

“…5 A different example: other activists reportedly traveled from the USA to virulently anti-gay Jamaica to 'heal' gay Jamaicans and turn them into heterosexuals. 6 Vulnerable Jamaicans were subjected to treatments that are known not to work. What is by now illegal in many jurisdictions, namely offering and providing treatments for homosexuality, is now exported to resource-poor countries.…”