As the GMC launches its latest ethical guidance on Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice today, advising doctors how they can ensure their personal beliefs do not adversely affect their relationships with or treatment of patients, the MDU has published advice for members, including examples of some typical dilemmas surrounding personal beliefs that members have raised on its medico-legal helpline.

Dr Emma Cuzner, MDU medico-legal adviser, said: "Doctors' individual beliefs and religious practices are a matter of personal choice and we think it is appropriate that the GMC requires doctors to keep personal feelings to themselves and to ensure they do not adversely affect patients' access to the care they need. It is also important that doctors are able to deal sensitively with any situation involving their own or their patients' religious or moral beliefs, out of respect for patients, whatever their lifestyle choices and beliefs."

"Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice expands on advice in Good Medical Practice with which most doctors are already familiar. It provides practical examples of common scenarios where both patients' and doctors' personal beliefs may cause some uncertainty, such as refusal of blood products by Jehovah's Witnesses, male circumcisions and completion of cremation forms. Doctors need to be aware of the contents of the guidance and comply with it when issues of personal and religious beliefs occasionally arise."

The MDU's detailed advice is available on its website.

The MDU is a mutual, not for profit, organisation owned by our members who include over 50 per cent of the UK's hospital doctors and GPs. Established in 1885, we were the world's first medical defence organisation. We defend the professional reputations of our members when their clinical performance is called into question. Our benefits of membership include indemnity for claims of clinical negligence and a wide range of medico-legal advisory services.

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