American Medical Association updates code of ethics to reflect realities of modern practices

Physician leaders have voted to adopt a modernized Code of Medical Ethics during the American Medical Association's annual meeting, capping an eight-year project to modernize the code's ethical guidance for relevance, clarity and consistency, the AMA said.

The Code of Medical Ethics was one of the two principal orders of business at the first AMA meeting in 1847. While medicine has changed significantly in the intervening 169 years, the founding document -- the first uniform code of ethics of its kind, according to the AMA -- is still is the basis of an explicit social contract between physicians and their patients. It is regularly cited as the medical profession's authoritative voice in legal opinions and in scholarly journals.

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Guided by a feedback-driven process the AMA described as "open and collaborative," the modernization project accomplished three primary objectives. The first was to incorporate language that applies to contemporary medical practice, in order to improve the document's relevance.

To improve clarity, the code has an improved structure and formatting to ensure that ethical principles and specific physician responsibilities are easy to find, read and apply. Finally, to improve consistency, the code consolidates related issues into a single, comprehensive statement.

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AMA President Steven J. Stack, M.D., said in a statement that modern medicine should remain "moral medicine," and that ethics should be placed on the center stage.

"The comprehensive update to the code's ethics guidance keeps pace with emerging demands physicians face with new technologies, changing patient expectations and shifting health care priorities," he said.

Twitter: @JELagasse