Should the doctor give in to the family’s insistence and give false information? (case study from practice)

Czech version

Authors: Ivanová Kateřina ¹; Juríčková Lubica ¹; Doležal Adam ²
Authors‘ workplace: Ústav veřejného zdravotnictví, Lékařská fakulta Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci ¹; Ústav humanitních studií, 2. lékařská fakulta Univerzity Karlovy v Praze ²
Published in: Geriatrie a Gerontologie 2023, 12, č. 3: 146-150
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Overview

Ivanová K, Juríčková L, Doležal A. Should the doctor give in to the family’s insistence and give false information? (case study from practice)

Respect for patient’s autonomy is one of the four basic ethical principles applicable to contemporary Western medicine. The patient must provide voluntary informed consent to the treatment procedure. It should reflect the patient’s preferences, requests, and value system. The provider is obliged to ensure that the patient is sufficiently informed in a comprehensible manner about his/her health condition. The aim of the study is to show the method of practical teaching regarding decision-making on the treatment of patients with severe communication problems, including possible solutions. Data are collected through questionnaires in which doctors write down ethically questionable situations from their own practice. Data are consistently generalized and prepared using the story-telling method. Case studies are taught using the Case Based Learning method. The case study is conceived as a story of Mr. Karel (80 years old), who is in the care of his daughter. He is deaf, communicates through sign language, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s type dementia, and his eyesight is deteriorating. Cataract surgery is an option to solve the problem. Mr. Karel, however, refuses the procedure. The daughter urges the doctor to tell the father that it is not an operation. In the doctor’s opinion, the operation has a definite benefit for the patient and a very low probability of harm. The result of the case study analysis are expert opinions (medical, ethical and legal).

Keywords:

autonomy – beneficence – communication of information – representative decision-making

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Article was published in

Geriatrics and Gerontology

2023 Issue 3