Tag: Alberta

Protection of Conscience Project weighs in on Alberta Bill 18

Recommends extension of protection, clarification of provisions re: health care facilities

News Release

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project has made a submission concerning Alberta Bill 18 (Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act). The bill is to provide the framework for the provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS: known in Canada as Medical Assistance in Dying/MAiD).

The bill does not mention freedom of conscience or religion, but some provisions will have an impact on these fundamental freedoms for nurse and medical practitioners and health care facilities. The Project submission is limited to those provisions.

The submission recommends that the bill be amended to include affirmation of practitioner freedom to refuse to actively assist in or facilitate the provision of EAS/MAiD, and to prohibit bullying or harassment of and discrimination against those who refuse to collaborate in the services. Further: these provisions should be applied to all regulated health professionals, since medical and nurse practitioners are not the only regulated health professionals likely to be called upon to collaborate in EAS/MAiD.

Affirmation of the freedom of health facility operators to refuse to permit EAS/MAiD on their premises is laudable and necessary. However, the provision that affirms their freedom to refuse to permit the provision of opinions related to EAS/MAiD on their premises invites confusion and conflict. The Project recommends that this be clarified.

See the Project submission online.

Contact:

Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project
Email: protection@consciencelaws.org

Pharmacist  freedom of conscience in Alberta

Sean Murphy*

Code of Ethics (2009)

A protection of conscience provision is found in the Alberta College  of Pharmacy Code of Ethics (2009).1 Objecting pharmacists are directed

  • to help patients “obtain appropriate pharmacy services from another pharmacist or health professional within a time frame fitting the patient’s needs” (clause 3);
  • to arrange their practices so that “the care of [their] patients will not be jeopardized” when they refuse to provide services for reasons of conscience (clause 4);
  • to continue “to provide professional services” until another pharmacist or health professional has assumed responsibility (clause 1).

The text seems to presume that the objecting pharmacist need not provide the morally contested service. The requirement to continue to provide “professional services” until someone else assumes responsiblity does not impose an obligation to provide it if another professional is not available within the relevant time frame. . . [Full text]

Freedom of conscience and nursing in Alberta

Sean Murphy*

Introduction

Nursing has often been described as a “caring profession.” For historical reasons associated with the development of nursing, it appears that most nursing guidance documents use the terms “care” or “nursing care” with respect to all nurse-patient interactions, including interventions or treatments ordered by attending physicians.

This puts objecting nurses at a rhetorical disadvantage. Objections are made to treatments or interventions, not to caring. However, in a nursing context this is more readily perceived or characterized as “refusing to care.”

The failure to distinguish between “care” and “treatment” can introduce uncertainty into guidance about conscientious objection, which, for example, may insist that an objecting nurse continue to provide “care” for a patient until relieved, without specifying that the care does not include the treatment or intervention to which the nurse objects…[Full text]

Physician freedom of conscience in Alberta

Sean Murphy*

Alberta has been identified by freedom of conscience advocates as providing a satisfactory model of accommodation that should be imitated across the country. In late 2019 the head of the Alberta Medical Association and sponsor of a controversial protection of conscience bill in the Alberta legislature agreed that existing protections were “appropriate and effective.” On the other hand, it has been reported that Alberta physicians are obliged to refer for morally contested services, including assisted suicide, which would be unacceptable to many objecting practitioners. The dissonant evaluations reflect differences between actual practice and two College policies that take different approaches to freedom of conscience…[Full text]

Controversial conscience rights bill will die on order paper

Second session of 30th legislature starts on Feb. 25

CBC News

Michelle Bellefontaine

A controversial private member’s bill on conscience rights for medical providers will be dropped now that the government intends to prorogue the first session of the 30th legislature. 

Government House Leader Jason Nixon announced on Wednesday that the second session will start Feb. 25 with a speech from the throne. . . [Full text]