Conscientious Objection in Medicine - Essay Example

I recommend conscience absolutism, in this case, considering the law of the state. “One must not lose sight of the fact that neither a pharmacist nor any other health care worker is a machine—they are people who perform jobs while also holding moral and ethical value systems that sometimes conflict with their professions” (Grady, 2006, p. 330).

Legally, the organization may not be in a position to file a case against Harry Rogers because the state’s law does not consider the refusal of a licensed healthcare professional to do something because of religious, moral, or ethical concerns reason enough to take some disciplinary action or apply some kind of criminal liability against him/her. One possibility is that the patient may sue the organization for not being able to get his/her medical help when it was required in case the supervisor is not able to bring another pharmacist to duty. Legally, the organization may be obliged to make immediate arrangements for another pharmacist to fill the prescription if Harry Rogers declined especially when Harry Rogers has priorly informed the supervisor that he would not fill such prescriptions.

On ethical grounds, the organization is responsible to get the patient medical help irrespective of Harry Rogers’s consent to fill the prescription. However, the organization is not allowed to force Harry Rogers to fill the prescription against his consent as the state’s law has provided room for such cases to happen. Several countries around the world have such laws. For example, “[I]n Spain, the code of ethics and medical ethics, is one of the places where the objection of conscience of health professionals has great development for years, states that the doctor can refrain from the practice of certain professional acts such as abortion, in vitro fertilization or sterilization, if they are in contradiction with its ethical and scientific beliefs” (Leon & Jimenez, 2010).

The refusal of the pharmacist to fill the prescription written by the physician when he is the only pharmacist available at the moment poses several challenges. Many people are affected by the pharmacist’s refusal to fill the prescription. These people include but are not limited to the patient, the physician, the supervisor, and the health care organization as a whole as it could bring a bad name to the public image of the organization. “Conscientious objection in health care always affects someone else’s health or access to care because the refusal interrupts the delivery of health services” (Berlinger, 2012). Numerous issues complicate this case. Firstly, this may set a negative impression of the health care organization on the patient. Secondly, the physician and/or the administrator has to arrange another pharmacist to fill the prescription on an immediate basis which would incur the organization additional cost and headache of arranging the pharmacist.