Advances in Medical Ethics
Open Access

Responsibilities of the Physician in Maintaining Good Medical Practice

Saint Peter^{* *}Correspondence: Saint Peter, Department of Medical Ethics, Keele University, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, Email:

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Description

Mutual trust and relationships between doctors and patients are necessary factors for therapeutic interventions. Changing medical developments have an impact on this correlation. Medical ethical concerns frequently include life and death. Serious health concerns have been raised regarding patient rights, informed consent, confidentiality, competency, advance directives, carelessness, and a variety of other issues. Ethics is concerned with making the best decisions under all situations. It is concerned with the distinction between the positive and negative aspects in a certain culture at a specific period. Medical ethics is concerned with doctors' and hospitals' responsibility to patients, as well as other health professionals and society. The health profession has a set of ethics that apply to various categories of health workers as well as health-care facilities. Ethics is not a fixed concept that applies to all eras. The considered acceptable ethics of a century ago may now no longer be regarded.

Law and ethics

Law is a societal responsibility enforced by the relevant authority, and violation may result in monetary (fine) or incarceration (or both) penalty. There are primarily two types of laws: statute law and judgement law.

"Ethics" is concerned with the study and/or construction of a cohesive collection of "rules" or principles by which people will live. It is the social value that links society by uniform opinion/ consideration and allows society to judge what is wrong and what is right. It is the moral science concerned with the principles of human obligation in society.

Responsibilities of the physician

The primary goal of the medical profession is to serve mankind; compensation or financial gain is a secondary factor. A doctor should be trained in the art of healing. No one other than a doctor with a certification recognised by the medical council of India/State Medical Council may practise contemporary medicine or surgery.

Maintaining good medical practice

The primary goal of the medical profession is to serve mankind with complete respect for the dignity of the profession and man. Physicians should enhance their knowledge and abilities and make them available to patients and colleagues. Membership in a medical society physician should join associations and societies and participate in the active operation of these organisations.

Every five years, a physician should enroll in professional continuing medical education programmes for at least 30 hours, which are conducted by reputable professional academic organizations. Every physician should keep medical records of his or her patients for three years from the start of therapy in a uniform format. If a request for medical records is made by a patient, authorised attendant, or legal authorities concerned, the request will be acknowledged and documentation will be delivered within 72 hours. A certified medical practitioner must keep a record of all medical certificates granted in a register. Efforts need to be made to digitalise the medical records for easy retrieval. A physician should disclose, without fear or favour, incompetent or corrupt, dishonest or unethical behaviour on the part of profession members.

Consent

It is a consensual agreement between two parties, in this case the patient and the doctor. There are two kinds of consent.

Implied consent

When a patient submits to a health care agency for medical examination or treatment, the consent is not documented. Unless any difficult operations are done, patients who visit the hospital's outpatient department for evaluation and treatment do not need to provide written consent.

Informed consent

It might be oral or documented, although it is usually written for future reference. Informed indicates that the patient or his/ her attendant knows the manner of treatment or procedure and has signed only after completely knowing it. In India, the legal age for consent is 12 years. In the case of sterilisation, all consents should be obtained from the spouse as well. In simple words, informed consent may be characterised as a tool for mutual communication between a doctor and a patient, with the latter expressing authorization/permission/choice for the doctor to act in a certain way.