Recommendations from the Code of Ethics for the New Zealand Medical Profession.

1. Doctors should accept a share of the profession’s responsibility toward society in matters relating to the health and safety of the public, health promotion and education, and legislation affecting the health or well being of the community.
2. Doctors have a role in ongoing efforts to achieve health equity. This includes working collaboratively with public health and other colleagues to shape services and programmes that address health inequities and the broader social and environmental factors that influence health and well being.
3. While doctors have a primary responsibility to individual patients, they have a concurrent responsibility to all other patients and the community. Doctors therefore have an ethical responsibility to manage available resources equitably and efficiently. Wherever possible, doctors should use their influence to advocate for appropriate resources to improve health outcomes for their patients and populations.
4. Rationing of resources must be open to public scrutiny and points of conflict identified and presented in a rational, non-biased manner to the public.
5. In an environment of resource constraint, priorities need to be assigned to achieve the wisest use of limited resources. Doctors have a duty to work with others in developing rules to set priorities. Doctors also have a duty to abide by such rules, provided the rules conform to ethical principles. The rules should be just, open, valid and reliable.
6. Doctors should recognise the responsibility to assist courts, commissioners, commissions and disciplinary bodies, in arriving at just decisions. When doctors are providing expert opinions, the doctor has a duty to assist the body impartially on relevant matters and to confine such opinion within their area of expertise.
7. Doctors should certify or give in evidence only that which has been personally verified when they are testifying as to circumstances of fact.