The General Medical Council has decreed that doctors must be non-judgmental and never allow personal baggage to clutter the consulting room. Good.

I have worked with doctors who never refer patients for abortions and I respect their views even if I don’t share them. All I ask is that they pass the patient to me for continuing care. Their rights under the Abortion Act to refuse to participate are balanced by a responsibility to make suitable alternative arrangements. Referring the patient to a “pro-life” organisation for “counselling” will not do.

Conflicts arise because doctors hold some beliefs sacrosanct that are not shared by a significant minority of their patients. For example, I believe sore throats don’t get better quicker if treated with antibiotics and I hold to that view even on the night before Christmas. But everybody has the right to make the wrong choice. If that means that I’m called upon to arrange the termination of an unplanned pregnancy or arrange chemotherapy for a smoker’s lung cancer then so be it. I may think to myself that the pregnant 17-year-old is feckless and the smoker got what she deserved but I won’t say it.

Some credos are more flexible than others. One of my patients embraced the Vegan culture and became something of an evangelist for the cause before he noticed that I’d taken his regular supply of sleeping pills – gelatine wrapped and most definitely animal derived – from his repeat prescription.

Doctors can be just as inconsistent. I know some who are against the testing of new drugs on animals but not one who refuses to prescribe them once marketed. When the first medicines developed as a result of stem-cell research appear I wonder whether those who currently campaign against it will choose to manage without them.

— The author is a GP in southeast London

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