Who the hell do these Canadian medical schoolsthink they are? Allowing medical schools to do gynecological exams on unconscious patients without their prior consent is sexual assault! Sure, the students gotta learn how to use speculums and know what to look for up in the hooha but at least ask permission first.
This is goes beyond a mere invasion of privacy. All you female Canadian dopers, I hope you never underwent this.
Winner, Best Thread Title.
Yeah, this squicks me out. Nobody should ever administer a medical procedure without express consent of the participant.
Nice user name / thread topic combo.
As to the practice, it doesn’t really bother me. I think I’d *rather *be unconscious whilst the class of '14 is studying for their orals.
I didn’t know oral was part of the exam. :eek:
I don’t think it’s just Canada. Wasn’t there something a few years back about Hopkins being quite unapologetic about doing the same?
What if I just want to find out if a duck’s quack echos?
I see a CBC original movie here: “John Horner, M.D., F.R.C.M.S.”
As someone who might have actually have had this happen to them (I had an ovarian cyst removed many years ago at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary), I don’t particularly care if medical students were doing pelvics on me while I was unconscious - they had so much stuff stuck up there already, a few more people peeking in wouldn’t have made much difference. Informed consent would have been nice though, and I wouldn’t have appreciated it if I was having surgery on a completely different body part and they took it upon themselves to do pelvics on me while I was having a mole removed from my face, for example.
You might be interested in this article:
I was so disappointed to find out that this thread was not actually about pie. Mmmmm . . . pie
I think it’s outrageous. I have given my consent to have medical students perform pelvic exams on me in the past, but I would never give consent to have one (or more than one) performed while I was unconscious.
It’s sneaky. If it’s no big deal, get consent before you do it. It’s also battery, and there would be hell to pay if I found out it had been done to me.
Actually, it seems that this was (is?) standard practice at plenty of American teaching hospitals.
Oh, grow up. If you go to a teaching hospital, you’re going to be used to teach med students. It’s just common sense. It’s not sexual assault, they’re not doing it for kicks.
And if they waited for your consent, they would face the same problem as corpse dissection : only a really, really small percentage of the public give it.
Hey, you know what else those sick fuckers do ? Med students watch reruns of your colonoscopy. The got tapes of your MRI. They display your X-Rays on retroprojectors in front of entire amphitheaters. OMG THEY LOOK AT YOUR PRIVATE BONES !!1! :rolleyes:
You ask me, I’d rather have competent docs than the knowledge nobody looked at your pwecious hoo-hah or tugged your lickle pickle. YMMV.
So it’s ok if while we are in taking out that polyp, we have a class of med students give you a prostate exam? Really?
I’d happily give consent, if asked, because you are right, I want future doctors to have learned what to do. But to do it without my consent? That is an invasion of my privacy. Oh, and the words are vagina and penis. We can say those here. I bet you can too.
From the article linked in the OP:
As the author also notes, however, even if no respondents indicated their willingness to give consent, that wouldn’t change the unethical nature of the practice.
If you don’t understand the difference between looking at lab results and x-rays, on the one hand, and a physical examination of a woman’s reproductive organs, on the other, then you’re too stupid for words.
No-one is arguing that med students shouldn’t get practice as these important examinations; all they’re asking is that the patient give informed consent.
I think there’s a compromise buried here somewhere. What about having a form that someone must sign before they get any treatment at the teaching hospital that says something to the effect of “certain minor diagnostic procedures may be given to you by medical students under the supervision of a physician for the purposes of educating our medical students.”
As Kobal2 said, I would think that someone who went to a teaching hospital for surgery would expect some level of education to be going on there. If doctors and others find it unreasonable that someone should feel uncomfortable about such procedures being performed on them while under anesthesia, why not be open about it? If I knew that part of the condition of my being admitted into that particular hospital was that I might get a prostate exam while I was out of it, I don’t think I would be that reluctant to sign such a consent form.
What I think most patients object to is being kept in the dark about procedures that seem routine to medical professionals, but may be completely foreign to patients.
Perfect. I would have no problem at all with this.
I don’t think there’s any room for compromise here. Don’t be cute about it - tell people what they’re consenting to. That’s why it’s called “informed consent” - you have the right to be informed about what they’re going to do to you. People are going to have widely divergent ideas about what a “minor diagnostic procedure” is. If you know you’re going to want to do a teaching pelvic exam, ask the patient if you can do a teaching pelvic exam.
I should think it perfectly obvious that anything they have to ask you for permission to do when you’re awake means they have to ask it for any time you’re not awake. A woman who is awake is ALWAYS asked if the student can practice on you. Why wouldn’t that hold true for times when you’re unconscious and therefore unable to observe and (potentially) withdraw consent?
By the way, Kobal2, I say this as a woman who has many times consented to have a student perform exams and Pap smears. And that usually meant that I went through everything twice, once with the student and once with the doctor. It sucks, but I get the importance of it. Moreover, the article states that a huge percentage WOULD consent if asked:
No compromise. I work in the medical field, in a “teaching hospital”, and doing unnecessary exams/procedures without full informed consent is not right.
Nearly 70% of the patients polled said they would give consent to have a pelvic exam performed on them if it was requested of them. So get the consent. Signing a general “we can do what we want” form would probably be shot down by any decent hospital’s legal department. Also, patients cannot sign away their rights, so the form does not protect the hospital from being sued if someone alleges that “they weren’t specific enough”/“I didn’t mean that!!!”/“I ended up with a bleeding cervix* and thought I had cancer”/“one of you jerks dislodged my Nuvaring, I didnt notice, had sex later, and got pregnant”/etc.