Essay on Informed Consent, Refusal, and Competence

she cannot afford the visits and the medicine. As a result, both her physical and mental/emotional

Another issue with the implementation of Informed consent arises when the patient waives the right to Informed consent and leaves the right to make the decision on the physician. Though legally correct, this can cause psychological stress for the physician especially when the decision is about a life threatening medical condition. Moreover, this also makes the patient vulnerable to abuse. (Manthous, DeGirolamo, 2003)

INFORMED CONSENT : Valid consent is impossible. To date, foetal tissue transplants have been handled as any other organ transplants under the UAGA, thus requiring consent of next of kin. The mother cannot give morally legitimate consent, since she initiated the termination of the pregnancy. Elimination of consent, however, would further turn the unborn child into an object; it would be inconsistent with the fact that, biologically, the developing foetus does not interpret the woman’s tissue. The UAGA and the NIH Panel both fail to discern the conflict between normal organ transplants and the function of foetal tissue. In the instance of foetal tissue, the mother is presumed to be the one who gives consent to the use of the tissue for the transplant (or for some other kind of experimentation). Granting to the normal understanding of proxy consent, her role assumes that she is working in the best interest of the unborn child. However, she is also the one who has initiated the final termination of pregnancy. Just quoting the part of the act dealing with informed consent stated in the NewZealand legislation

Why should you read consent forms? No really, why? Does anybody even read those things to start with? Why can’t you just trust the doctors and just take their words when they say it that all going to be ok Mr. Insert name here. That is the thing that journalist Deborah Franklin is trying to stop people from doing. In her passage “Informed Consent” she takes a stance against the way consent forms are handled, and the fact that that doctors do not take the time to explain the forms and the risks of the procedures to their patients is wrong and should be fixed. She believes that the doctors are responsible for this problem and they should be the ones to fix it, but that is where Franklins are claim is false. It should be a joint effort by

If an emergency is life-threatening, or the patient is not mentally competent to make a decision regarding consent, then the requirement may be waived. In a life-threatening situation, there may not be time to provide a patient with the risks and benefits of a procedure. If a surrogate is available to make a decision on behalf of the patient, such as a spouse or a parent, then they will often to be authorized to give consent. Otherwise, informed consent is presumed.

In this case, the night of January 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan was driving a car and lost control of her car as she traveled down Elm Road in Jasper County, Missouri. The car overturned, and Nancy Cruzan was discovered lying face down in a ditch without detectable respiratory and cardiac function. Paramedics were able to restore her breathing and heartbeat at the accident site and she was transported to a hospital in an unconscious state. Then neurosurgeon diagnosed her and found that she is having sustained probable cerebral contusions compounded by significant anoxia (lack of oxygen). The Missouri trial court found that permanent brain damage generally results after 6 minutes in an anoxic state and Nancy was in this stage for 12 to 14 minutes.

It is also clear that while making these decisions, the decisions ought to be made based on informed consent (Werth and Crow 195). Sometime, the patient may be experiencing dementia, clinical depression or delirium for which they may be affecting the patient’s decision making capabilities (Werth and Crow 197, 198). If such a person is allowed to make their right-to-die decision, this may be done without the patient having comprehensive information before consent and thus should not be encouraged (Werth and Crow 198).

Healthcare Consent legislation applies to everyone above the age of 18 (some places 16) and has the following rights (Ref 1)

Informed Consent allows a doctor to render treatment to a patient. By signing the document states that the patient understands the circumstances and what is required. This paper is to analyze the consent and non-consent, and ethical issues that can become a problem.

With her, not having support, she has no other option but to listen to her husband who is her physician and he beliefs he

As I have discussed above regarding legislation and policies promoting person centred practice in health and social care setting. One of the most crucial elements of all these legal requirements is to establish consent with individual in terms of making decisions. There are many ways of informing consent with person centred practice for health professionals under different circumstances.

First, the relationship between a doctor and patient is a valuable asset in today’s medical environment. In this case, Merry didn’t understand that her diagnosis was worsening after refusing treatment, her autonomy was to have control of her own life decisions. As a result, Merry’s family chose to deny

There are some ethical dilemmas evident in this scenario, starting with an End of life dilemma, refusal of care and informed consent.“End of

Ethical dilemma may also arise in cases where a patient may feel their right to DNR should be carried out when giving direct order. The DNR process, however, is required to be documented by a physician. Andrew Putnam (2003) presents a case where an eighty-eight year old patient’s code status was DNR; “However, the patient has never signed formal advance directive statement or assigned durable power of attorney for her health care to anyone.” (Putnam, 2003, 2025) Ethics can be simply stated as doing the right thing (Roberts, 2002, 242); but in this case ethics is questioned because the physician was faced with the decision to carry out the wishes of the patient or to make a decision based on legality. In this case, it may have been morally right to carry out the wishes of the patient who wanted DNR orders carried out, but it may have been the right choice to do the legal thing and not carried out due to lack of signed documentation.

I asked her if they, as husband and wife, had discussed what they agreed to do in situations like this. Using the AHCD and the POLST forms as a guide to explain both forms in detail, I asked her what she thinks her husband's wishes are if his condition deteriorates? She could not answer straight and became tearful. I tried to rationalize each option for her and explain that she could always change the elected choices. In the end, she elected to keep her husband, Full Code. She also elected to have artificial nutrition and hydration provided to the patient if the patient's condition deteriorates. However, she did not want to specify a surrogate decision