A Crucial App Free to CMA Members
In 2019, the Catholic Medical Association announced the launch of the Catholic Medical Conscience App. Since then, the medical landscape has increasingly been riddled with one ethical dilemma after another at mind boggling speed making this app a providential tool for these times.
The goal of the app is to present the vast and illuminating Catholic moral and social teachings to clinicians in a usable, practicable way to help them discern what is the most ethical solution to a problem they face on the job.
“The app is supposed to act where there is no Catholic health care ethicist,” explained one of the app’s developers, Dr. Brendan Rhatican. “In this way, it is interactive, and accompanies the clinician’s medical judgment and conscience. The app is trustworthy, and has the nihil obstat and imprimatur.”
Dr. Rhatican developed the app with his cousin Daniel Miller while they were students and worked with CMA health care ethicists, ethics committee members and other medical students to provide the app on behalf of CMA for free to members and anyone who wishes to use it.
“The ethics committee of the CMA was tasked to review the application prior to its publication,” explained Ethics Committee Co-Chair Dr. Greg Burke. “The committee found it to be very sound. It’s a wonderful and practical guide for a busy clinician seeking Church teaching for ethical questions that is both orthodox and well referenced.”
The app is divided into three sections: beginning of life, during life and end of life. Within each section are common dilemmas with questions to guide the clinician to make an informed decision. For any ethical question not in the app, users can call the National Catholic Bioethics Center to speak to an ethicist that can provide additional help. The number is provided in the introduction. New to the app is the topic called “using a vaccine procured from an illicit source,” which many users found particularly useful during the covid vaccine debates. It also includes other new topics that cover cooperation with evil such as whether its ethical to assist at evil surgical procedures or cooperate with syringe service programs.
“Truthfully, my favorite topic, and the one I use most often, is the new virtue-based examination of conscience for physicians. It is based on the virtue ethics of St Thomas Aquinas,” said Dr. Rhatican. “For a long time, Catholic ethicists have talked about double effect, cooperation with evil, and protecting human dignity, which are all good and true principles which should be discussed. However, our moral reasoning should never leave out what makes us Christians: the beatitudes and sermon on the mount, virtues, gifts of the Spirit… To that end, we wanted an examination of conscience that helped not only with identifying sins, but also helped with striving for Christian excellence and sanctity while at work.”
Some ways the app will assist Catholic doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals include:
- Communicating ethical dilemmas in clinical (not philosophical) language and context.
- Guiding a clinician to decide what is right concerning open questions in the Church.
- Asking the most important question to systematically guide the user through an ethical dilemma.
- Referring user to specific paragraphs within appropriate primary resource documents for further reading and guidance.
- Elaborating when the user selects “see comments.”
- Coaching the clinician to guide patients through open-ended questions.
For suggestions to include additional topics and/or questions, CMA members can reach out to Dr. Rhatican with their feedback at brendan.t.rhatican@gmail.com. The Catholic Medical Conscience App is available for free in the App Store and Google Play.