CASE 3: Patient Request for Bad News Information in Trauma Centre
Deborah Mullins is on a highway driving in a car with her same sex partner, Carole, and their three-year-old daughter, Samantha. They are hit by a drunk driver in a multivehicle accident. Ambulances quickly arrive on the scene, and Deborah and Carole, both seriously injured, are rushed to a nearby hospital in separate ambulances. Samantha is taken with minor injuries in another ambulance to a children’s hospital ten kilometres away.
In the hospital emergency room Carole’s vital signs are absent. The trauma team tries to resuscitate her, but their efforts fail. Deborah, awake in the same hospital’s trauma room, is not aware of her partner’s death. She asks about her family. At the same time her vital signs deteriorate because she has lost a lot of blood. Her colour is pale and her lips are cyanotic. One lung has collapsed and her breathing is laboured. She has had kidney damage on one side, sustained from the impact from another vehicle. She urgently needs to have surgery and whether she will survive the surgery is uncertain. If she does survive, she will be in an induced coma for a week to allow her body to heal. Her physical status is unstable, and the nurses and their colleagues fear and know that any further stress could seriously impair her capacity to survive the surgery and post-operative care in a coma.
Deborah receives medications to sedate her and loses consciousness. Then suddenly and briefly she awakes and asks, “How are Carole and Samantha?” The nurses tell her that Samantha is well and at another hospital. No one on the team wants to answer Deborah’s question about Carole. They are aware of the risks of telling her now. One of the nurses evokes the concept of “therapeutic privilege” to justify not telling her the truth. At the same time, there is discomfort about not being honest. One of the nurses points out that Deborah could die in the operating room or intensive care unit without knowing the truth about Carole.
The police officers ask to speak to Deborah before she goes to surgery. They want a statement from her before she loses consciousness.
CASE 3: QUESTIONS
1.Do planned deception or delayed disclosure have a legitimate role in providing health care to Deborah? Support your answer with reference to ethical principles and values. What would you do if you disagreed with the team decision that Deborah should be protected from receiving this tragic news before her surgery?
2.Discuss the concept of paternalism and how it applies to this case.
3.Rules about disclosure of health information to patients and families have exceptions. What exceptions do you think apply in the case of the rule that patients should be told the truth when they ask?
4.Trauma staff may be asked by police officers to provide personal health information. Review the policy where you study or are employed. What are the guiding ethical principles of this policy?
We are a professional custom writing website. If you have searched a question and bumped into our website just know you are in the right place to get help in your coursework.
Yes. We have posted over our previous orders to display our experience. Since we have done this question before, we can also do it for you. To make sure we do it perfectly, please fill our Order Form. Filling the order form correctly will assist our team in referencing, specifications and future communication.
1. Click on the “Place order tab at the top menu or “Order Now” icon at the bottom and a new page will appear with an order form to be filled.
2. Fill in your paper’s requirements in the "PAPER INFORMATION" section and click “PRICE CALCULATION” at the bottom to calculate your order price.
3. Fill in your paper’s academic level, deadline and the required number of pages from the drop-down menus.
4. Click “FINAL STEP” to enter your registration details and get an account with us for record keeping and then, click on “PROCEED TO CHECKOUT” at the bottom of the page.
5. From there, the payment sections will show, follow the guided payment process and your order will be available for our writing team to work on it.
Need this assignment or any other paper?
Click here and claim 25% off
Discount code SAVE25