Informed Consent: Ethics And Ethical Dilemmas In Health Care

2066 Words9 Pages

Every hospital has to follow the laws and respect patients’ privacy any rights. Even though the medical staff encourages the patient and the family to go along with the appropriate treatment in order to cure the illness, but it’s still their choice to accept or refuse it. This paper addresses that informed consent is different for every culture, and strategies on how a medical professional can balance cultural preferences with full disclosure. Furthermore, why adolescents shall be allowed to make their own life and death decisions and address the dilemmas on informed consent, also ethics versus legal issues.
Informed Consent
The informed consent should be different for different cultures. A culture of an individual is their way of life. Within …show more content…

Examining Six Medical Ethics Dilemmas (2008) magazine states that, “Doctors are men and women of science: assess the symptoms, order the tests, make a diagnosis, and administer the treatment…teams work with patients and families to help understand a prognosis, navigate treatment options, and act as mediators in oftentimes highly stressful life-and-death situation.” The sick person has the right to accept or refuse treatment after getting sufficient information. One ethical dilemma was brought to the attention of the hospital staff that consisted of a drunk man who hit his head on the bar and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors declared him brain dead since he had severe inner bleeding occur within his brain. Next, the patients’ girlfriend came to the hospital, and she asked for a testicular biopsy in order to retrieve his sperm before he deceased, so she could conceive his baby. Within this situation, the doctors had to decide whether to grant the patients girlfriend request or not. Dr. Rhodes made a stunning statement, this woman needs to set forth any evidence about the patients’ plan of posthumous reproduction. Another physician mentioned that the request could have been granted if she was the patient’s wife. Dr. Berlinger thought that the girlfriend was trying to inherit part of the patients’ estate by producing his heir. Then the outcome came to the patients’ family who were open to the idea of continuing their sons’ legacy. Also, the physician suggested to the parents that another way of giving new life was through organ denotation instead of harvesting the sperm. The girlfriend and the parents came to the final decision of denoting the patients’ organ and they were transplanted into four people. This was an example of an ethical dilemma that occurred within the health care facility. Five guidelines are