Volume 191 - Issue 3
The Australian Medical Council draft code of professional conduct: good practice or creeping authoritarianism?
Authors: Paul A Komesaroff and Ian H Kerridge
Med J Aust 2009; 191 (3): 190-191. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02744.x
Published online: 3 August 2009
Published online: 3 August 2009
In reply: The debate about the proposed national code of conduct (“the Code”) has raised a number of important issues, including those highlighted by Myers. The original draft aroused serious concern in the community about the potential role of a centralised bureaucracy with the power to enforce a set of precepts derived from a narrow, largely discredited, philosophical perspective. Although the revised draft now circulated for public comment is admittedly less objectionable than its predecessor, significant concerns remain relating to both its form and its content.
The main issues are still the purpose and role of the Code and the confusion between ethical and legal discourses on which it is based. In a multicultural society in which pluralism and diversity are themselves regarded as inherently valuable, the very concept of a unitary set of criteria that define good practice is questionable. In this setting, the proper roles of codes of conduct and of ethics are not to enforce particular kinds of outcomes, but rather to inform and enrich practice. If the Code were devised as an educational process to stimulate clinicians to reflect critically on their existing practices and underlying values, it would be much more likely to change behaviour and increase community wellbeing.