More health ethics yay Flashcards
Your ethical obligations in order
Firstly to your patient, To your colleagues, To your profession
Exceptions to autonomy
Patients subject to mental health legislation, and young children under majority
Your basic obligations as medical student
Skills and behavior to provide good clinical care. Life long maintenance of knowledge and skills. Engage with teaching, training, assessing and appraising. Skills to develop and maintain strong professional relationships with patients. Work with colleagues in and out of health system.
Communication with patients
Listen to patients (They tell you diagnosis, and they won’t hear you unless you hear them - mutual thinking). Be honest (but not all at the same time!). Learn to communicate unwelcome news. Need to communicate enough info to satisfy informed consent.
Concerning children
Generally parents make decisions on behalf of children. Presumption that children over 16 is competent (depends tho). In emergency, act to preserve life first, and seek assent ASAP.
Confidentiality entails
Any clinical information, picture, medical image, clinics attended or anything that might disclose the patient’s identity, illness, disability etc. Disclosure of information generally requires signed consent.
Allowed disclosure w/o consent
To people directly involved in care or responsible for continuing care (unless expressly forbidden); comply with court order; To law enforcement officer (if imminent danger to patient or another person; by other legislation (eg Infectious diseases)
What can you disclose
The minimum information required to adequately care for patient. No surprises.
Comment on colleagues
Senior instructors etc are generally very good, but many didn’t have ethics training. If you have questions, address it.
Emergency situations in some circumstances
What you might regard as an emergency at home might arise routinely in resource poor settings. Act within your competence. If you think your actions might reasonably improve the outcome, you can act.
Social Media
Don’t accept patients as friends.
Love life and medicine
Longterm patients (including ex-patients) are off limits (ER one time patient nbd). The love of your life and children etc. can not become your patient (but you can prescribe some meds in some circumstances)
Tricouncil Policy for medical research
Stipulates Ethic Board composition. Provides Guidelines ensuring ethical treatment of research subjects. Funding from Government sources must be approved by REB compliant with Tricouncil Guidelines.
