Ethics Office

Code of Ethics of the American Confederation of Urology (CAU)

In recent years, the practice of Medicine, including Urology, was substantially altered, with the evolution of new paradigms, which include the current social and political contexts and also the changes in professional activities in hospitals and hospitals. ambulatory

The enormous development of technologies at all levels, the increase in scientific research, the relationship between Medicine and Industry and the growing independent powers of traditional values are factors that, among others, raise new challenges, demanding a reflection and a vision tinged with ethics.

That is why the development of medical ethics committees (bioethics), at the different levels that correspond, can reflect, discuss and elaborate recommendations and codes that complete and adapt the deep ethical values of Medicine to new realities, also analyzing the point of ethical view concrete situations in practical contexts.

This is done, regardless of the legal aspects in different countries.

Understanding that the American Confederation of Urology seeks to develop the best standards of urological care, we must also include in them the ethical instance: that is why we propose this Code of Ethics , to which we must all commit ourselves.

Doctors Urologists, in general:
1. They must:
  1. Perform the practice of urology with honesty and full professional and moral independence.
  2. Provide a competent medical service, with compassion and respect for human dignity.
  3. Sustain and improve their qualifications and urological knowledge through continuous study, maintaining their updated urological practice according to the “leges artis” using the base of proven scientific evidence.
  4. Cooperate in the advancement and propagation of the art and science of urology. Transmit your knowledge and practice to colleagues who want it.
  5. Recognize its important role in the education of public opinion, acting with caution when disclosing discoveries, new techniques, or treatments through non-professional channels.
  6. Conduct their research, experimentation and academic activities with honesty, zeal and truthfulness, recognizing their responsibilities, both methodologically and ethically following the standardized guidelines, up to the publication and financial support that should be clearly expressed in written form.
  7. Recognize your responsibility as an expert in the community.
  8. Inform the competent authorities about urologist colleagues who practice unethical and incompetent or those who commit fraud or deception.
2. They should not:
  1. Allowing to be influenced by a personal benefit or unfair discrimination.
  2. Receive no financial benefit or other incentives just for referring patients or prescribing specific products.
  3. Carry out any advertising that is not honest and truthful, that is, false, equivocal, fraudulent, scandalous or partial.

In their relationship with patients, Urologists should:
1. Respect all patients as individuals, and treat them with dignity and impartiality, without abuse, exploration or corruption at all levels.
2. Always remember the obligation to respect human life from its beginning to the end.
3. Respect professional secrecy within the limits of the law of each member country of the CAU.
4. Consider informed consent as an integral part of the medical care provided. Recognize that patients must know all the information necessary to give their consent and to make their own choice of treatment, despite their own personal inclinations. The information provided should include the elements that the usual practice advises, according to each member country.
5. Respect the right of the competent patient to accept or reject a treatment, including different reasons, including their beliefs.
6. Recognize that the dedication to the patient is total once you have accepted the case, and if for some reason you decide to abandon the continuation of the requested medical attention, you must obtain an adequate substitute.
7. Understand that competence includes both having the relevant knowledge about the management of patients’ problems and the ability to perform with prudence and therapeutic proportionality whatever is necessary at all times.
8. Accept only the remuneration of medical services performed or supervised by each doctor and the remuneration will be in an adequate relationship with the service provided, regardless of who pays for said service.
9. Assume responsibility for the pre- and post-operative care of surgical patients and the continuing care of outpatients, unless it specifically designates a competent substitute and reports it appropriately.
10. Condemn unnecessary surgery considering it a serious ethical violation, and not participate in surgeries performed in inappropriate places without adequate preoperative assessment or without adequate postoperative care

In their relationship with colleagues, Urologists should:
1. Respect all colleagues promoting good professional relations, with solidarity and cooperation.
2. Share knowledge and skills with colleagues, seeking advice when there are doubts about the decisions to be made, and help colleagues when the collaboration is requested.
3. Encourage colleagues with limitations in their medical practice to seek help.
4. Give testimony, if requested, before a court or outside it, based on recent and lived experiences. Reviewing medical acts in detail and testifying regarding their content clearly, honestly and impartially, based on the best of their knowledge, capacity and experience, without condemning widely accepted practices or excusing clearly anomalous actions.

In their relationship with other health professionals, Urologists should:
1. Respect all health professionals and maintain good and healthy professional relationships with all people and professional classes.
2. Collaborate independently but honestly with all professionals and health care institutions, scientific and professional, doing, if the case requires a declaration of interest.

In practice, in specific situations that are doubtful from the ethical point of view, the Urologists should consult the ethics committees of their countries and / or the Ethics Committee of the American Confederation of Urology.

Finally, we intend to work constantly to improve this Code of Ethics, improving its value for the American Confederation of Urology (CAU) and that it will benefit all the urologists that make it up.

Ethics Office of the American Confederation of Urology, CAU
November 2014