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*Lately I've been seeing more news reports about pharmacists who, on the basis of religious belief/convictions, refuse to fill certain types of birth control prescriptions (particularly "the morning-after pill"). Does this violate professional ethics? What if a pharmacist refuses to fill an epileptic's seizure medications because he/she believes the epileptic should have faith in God that the seizures can stop?
Where does this end?
Their job is to fill physicians' prescriptions. They can take a different career path if it bothers them to that extent. I don't say that glibly. A few of the pharmacists I've seen interviewed seem to have a problem with birth control of ANY sort and excepting what's available for purchase over the counter, they don't want to dispense control devices (and not just "the morning-after pill").
Who's next to decide what should and shouldn't be sold to a consumer, based on their own personal beliefs and preferences?
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Who's next to decide what should and shouldn't be sold to a consumer, based on their own personal beliefs and preferences?
If they don't want to sell the drugs, they don't have too. There is nothing that binds a pharmacist to sell birth control; if the pharmacist refuses, the customer can allways go to a different pharmacist. You can't *force* the seller to give something to the buyer. And the refusal of a few pharmacists to sell birth control hardly consuites a real lack or shortage of birth control.
If I don't want to sell lemonade to the fella in the street, I don't need a reason. If I am forced to sell lemonade to the same fella in the street, whats next? Fixing prices? consfication of my property to be given away?
It is fully withen the legal rights of a pharmacist to refuse to sell a drug to a prescription bearing person.
Does this violate professional ethics? What if a pharmacist refuses to fill an epileptic's seizure medications because he/she believes the epileptic should have faith in God that the seizures can stop?
Said pharmacist would probably go out of buissness real fast. Market forces and community actions would make such a stand intolerable.
"I am the spritual son of Abraham, I fear no man and no man controls my destiny"
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What if you live rural, there's only one pharmacist for miles around?
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What if you live rural, there's only one pharmacist for miles around?
*Rik, you must have read my mind. I was just going to post along those lines.
Yes indeed. The town I grew up in had only 1 pharmacy. Not everyone lives in a metropolitan area or even a large city. I know of one small town near here with 1 pharmacy; otherwise there's a 40-mile (one-way) drive at least.
The sense of duty is dead in America. This morning my husband and I ate breakfast in a restaurant. Our waiter spent most of his time yapping on his cell phone. He's not getting paid to talk on the phone and it wasn't his break time (he was in the dining section of the restaurant). Don't like it, go to another restaurant? Yeah, we will. But that's not the point. Hang up and do your job.
A sense of obligation and duty is d-e-a-d, or close to dying.
It's a patient's right to have prescriptions filled. It's the pharmacist's duty to fill the prescription -- which is a legal document penned from a certified physician.
To not fill it is *discrimination*, period. In my books the same as turning away a patient because of race, color or creed.
What's next?
--Cindy
P.S.: Prometheusunbound, aren't you the person who tried to put automobile accidents on par with deliberate terrorist acts? And you know, I've -never- seen a "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone" sign in a pharmacy. Probably because nearly most if not all are owned and operated by/within a corporate entity.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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I don't know any pharmacists, but have a nephew who's a doc, his wife a doc for children, and a former drinkin' buddy who's doctor. (I quit drinking, he didn't, heh. Well, only off-duty off course...)
Anyhooo... lotsa discussions about morality and stuff... with those people. Good docs think before they prescribe, and increasingly so, patients are getting more assertive, lately....
And in the end, it's the doc that makes the decision what to prescribe, based on the case he knows, because he's the one doing the diagnosis and and talking etc stuff....
IMO: a pharmacist doesn't know why you get certain medication, (legally shouldn't anyway...) so shouldn't meddle, no?
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I am uncertain if I would put the argument in such absolutist terms. (Lest I find myself arguing that my sister, whose life was saved by a pharmacist refusing to submit to prescription procedures, had a "right to die" and it was the pharmacist's job to kill her...)
However, I think that you're correct about duty being the important concept here.
The pharmacy regulations in most states are set up to allow deviations from procedure, but those deviations are allowed on the assumption that they can be justified by the fulfillment of the pharmacist's duties. If the pharmacist isn't doing his job and is just taking advantage of the system to express himself, that's bad. He should go take up art for self expression instead and leave his patients alone.
Can you imagine something like this happening on a Mars mission? "Sorry, Commander, but 'clinical depression' is just short for 'character failings'." Egad! A sense of duty that actually includes the job a person is supposed to be doing would need to be strongly encouraged, even screened for. And a severe enough failure to act should be punished.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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