Prescribing not prosecuting: the impact of healthcare professionals. FSRH's Current Choices

BMJ talk medicine

In this podcast, Janie Foote, Editorial Manager of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care (JFPRHC) talks to two of the participants at one of the afternoon workshops held at the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare’s Current Choices Conference held in London, UK in November 2016. The workshop was entitled ‘Prescribing not prosecuting: the impact of healthcare professionals’ legal duties on women and girls’ and it was led by Dr Jayne Kavanagh, Principal Clinical Teaching Fellow at University College London (UCL) Medical School, and Specialty Doctor in sexual and reproductive health at the Margaret Pyke Centre in London. Dr Kavanagh is a Principal Clinical Teaching Fellow at UCL, where she is responsible for designing and delivering the medical ethics and law undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at UCL Medical School. The workshop considered two controversial and timely topics, namely (1) the potential impact on consultations of mandatory recording, sharing and reporting of information about female genital mutilation (FGM) and (2) the requirements of a legally robust ‘abortion assessment’ consultation. The aim of the workshop was to explore the potential clash of clinicians’ legal duties with their professional duty to make the care of patients their first concern. I asked Drs Jilna Shukla and Priyanka Patel, both from Homerton Hospital in London, about their impressions of the workshop, and what they feel they will take away from it. http://jfprhc.bmj.com/