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The Monitor's Consent Case Study

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When a mentally ill patient becomes too incapacitated to properly give consent for a research experiment, should the experiment team stop and allow the procedure to continue? In the case study, “The Monitor’s Consent”, a researcher apart of the Department of Psychiatry questions the ethics of this situation. The nurse providing care for the impaired schizophrenic patient tries to persuade the researcher that both the subject and his monitor agreed to the operation before, however, they are now becoming increasingly symptomatic to his own illness and sedatives. Even though they did give consent prior to the medication, the researcher is concerned that they were too incapacitated due to their own disease to give consent. The patient, Mr. Young, did not sign an advance directive beforehand to allow…show more content…
In general, they are almost always beneficial especially when the subject unconscious and is unable to oversee their own well being. Conversely, the disadvantage of a monitor/representation in almost all these situations is they may not have the exact same thoughts, ideas, or reactions as the subject to specific situations the subject will be put in. They also may have alternative motives than the subject, like in the case study, when the father wanted the procedure to continue so other people in the future may be in a better position; while Mr. Young may not have wanted to proceed. Limits should be placed on the power of a monitor to enroll their patients into studies because they do not have a legal right to, they only represent and assist the patient when they need it. When a compromised patient and monitor disagree about how to proceed in a particular course of action, all progress should be paused and allow the patient time to recover to receive an unbiased message of consent or
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