Changing Roles in Russian Healthcare

Extract

In the early 1990s, the primary problem in Russian bioethics was to gain the attention and recognition of the public and the medical establishment. Very few people were even familiar with the word “bioethics.” Within medical education, only a paternalistic and scholastic “medical deontology” was viewed as the professionally acceptable way to deal with the existing moral problems. The public was ignorant of the rights of patients and consumers of medical services. The usual way of resolving conflicts between patients and physicians was to complain to medical authorities. Very few cases of disputes were brought to the courts. Representatives of religious groups did not participate in discussions involving dilemmas generated by progress in biomedical technologies, and they did not seek to influence legislation in this area.