AMA Responds to Florida Gun Communication Law

Credit: Nikola Bilic

The AMA is a vigorous defender of the physician-patient-family relationship and opposes state or federal efforts to interfere in the content of communication in clinical care delivery between clinicians and patients. Thus, the AMA plans to support litigation that may be necessary to block the implementation of newly enacted state or federal laws that restrict the privacy of physician-patient-family relationships or that violate the First Amendment rights of physicians in their practice of the art and science of medicine. That’s what the AMA House of Delegates said at this year’s annual policymaking meeting in Chicago in June.

The resolution is in response to a controversial new Florida law that restricts what physicians are allowed to discuss with patients about gun ownership. Florida psychiatrists and other physicians have voiced strong concerns about how this would interfere with a potentially important element of the doctor-patient relationship, since this type of knowledge can be crucial in preventing accidental, or even deliberate, injuries or deaths. For coverage of the AMA meeting look to upcoming editions of Psychiatric News, and for more information about the Florida law see Psychiatric News at http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/5/16.3.full.