Patient-physician covenant
ISSUE SUMMARY
By its traditions and very nature, medicine is a special kind of human activity–one that cannot be pursued effectively without the virtues of humility, honesty, intellectual integrity, compassion, and effacement of excessive self-interest. Medicine is, at its center, a moral enterprise grounded in a covenant of trust. This covenant obliges physicians to be competent, and to use their competence in the patient’s best interests. Physicians, therefore, are both intellectually and morally obligated to act as advocates for the sick, injured or infirm wherever their welfare is threatened and for their health at all times.
ADOPTED ACTION OR POLICY
The Kansas Medical Society reaffirms the following covenant between the physician and patient:
A physician’s first obligation must be to serve the good of those persons who seek their help and trust them to provide it. Any defection from placing the patient’s well-being first and foremost may compromise quality or jeopardize access to medical care.
The medical profession must reaffirm the primacy of its obligations to the patient through national, state and local professional societies, through research, and especially through personal behavior. As advocates for the promotion of health and support of the sick and injured, physicians are called upon to discuss, defend and deliver medical care by every ethical means available. Only by caring and advocating for the patient can the integrity of the profession be affirmed.
Adopted by the KMS House of Delegates on April 30, 2011.
