The President of the Commonwealth Legal Education Association, Professor David McQuoid-Mason, has called for reforms in the medical system of Ghana in the areas of both education and practice.
He is of the view that, the introduction of courses that focus on law and ethics will go a long way to clean up the system.
“They need to include in the medical school curriculum a course in law and ethics. It’s very important for medical practice because unless doctors follow their ethical principles, they will get in trouble with the law.”
When asked about the rising need of family members to sue one hospital or another for negligence in the event of the death of a relative, the medical law expert blamed the phenomenon on the lack of professional training for nurses.
“There have been a lot of cases like that I’ve seen in Ghana mainly dealing with nurses and it has to do with [maybe] training of nurses, professional attitude or not complying with the Florence Nightingale oath, if they take it. But they should be complying with those principles.”
Professor McQuoid-Mason was speaking to citinewsroom.com on the side-lines of a conference on the theme ‘Case Law and Medical Practice in Africa’, organized by the Ghana Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
The two-day seminar was aimed at adequately equipping doctors with the requirement of the medical laws and ethics of the country.
“The objective of this seminar is to show the doctors how if they follow four basic ethical principles, they will be acting in accordance with the Ghanaian constitution”.
He pointed out that doctors should always respect their patient’s autonomy, the independency of patients to make decision for themselves,
“You have a right to privacy, and you have the right for people not to touch your body without you giving your consent. The third is to not harm your patient. Again in your constitution, you don’t refuse people emergency medical treatment – you have a public calling as a doctor,” he said.
“The fourth one is justice and fairness; whether rich or poor, whether or not they have a disease, you treat them all fairly,” he added.
Professor McQuoid-Mason, who is also a professor at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, further noted that nurses were mostly found wanting regarding issues of the breach of medical laws and ethics.
“Most of the Ghana law reports I found were actually dealing with nurses and not with doctors. The only people that get sued are nurses. They don’t sue the doctors here … because doctors don’t like to give evidence against other doctors, whereas they should be. A part of their job as members of the Medical and Dental Council which looks after them is to protect the public,” he said.
Some of the topics studied at the seminar included Health Law, Doctor-patient Relationship, How Criminal Law Controls the Practices of Medicine, Informed Consent, Confidentiality, Termination of Pregnancy, End of Life Decisions and Different Methods of Reproductive Health amongst others.
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By: Ann-Shirley Ziwu & Akosua Ofewaa Opoku/citinewsroom.com/Ghana