Are forced rectal exams immoral?

Syzygys

Syzygys

As a mother, I am telling you
Valued Senior Member
No kidding!

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0108/488422.html

"A construction worker claimed in a lawsuit claiming that when he went to a hospital after being hit on the forehead by a falling wooden beam, emergency room staffers forcibly gave him a rectal examination. Brian Persaud, 38, says in court papers that after he denied a request by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital emergency room employees to examine his rectum, he was "assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned." His lawyer, Gerrard M. Marrone, said he and Persaud later learned the exam was one way of determining whether he had suffered spinal damage in the accident."

"....emergency room staffers insisted on examining his rectum and held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that." He said Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around and staffers gave him an injection, which knocked him out, and performed the rectal exam.

Persaud woke up handcuffed to a bed and with an oxygen tube down his throat, the lawyer said, and spent three days in a detention center."
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I say it is perfectly normal when someone is complaining about a headache to have a look at his rectum, just in case....
 
doctors are Gods above us, they can do anything they want as long as we stay alive and they can weasel their way out of inflicted damages if any
 
As i am training to be a paramedic we learn about A&E procidures and i have never herd of a rectal exam for a suspected spinal injury (will ask my sister though, she is studying physio and may have herd of it). The standed trauma procedures are, trauma serise of bloods, head and neck, chest and abdoman x-rays, abdoman ultrasound then off for an MRI.

As for the implications he is compleatly correct it does constitue assult, battery, and false inprisionment.

A patient has the right to refuse ANY treatment they do not wish to have performed UNLESS they are under a mental health order issued by the police and reviewed by a shrink. Further more any such order must be reviewed by the guardianship board.

Both chemical and physical restraints consitute assult and false inprisionment
a forced rectal exam could be classed as sexual assult as well.

What a sick case
 
He has a good case against the hospital that's for certain. An MRI or CAT scan could have found out if his spine was injured, they didn't have to go against his wishes. As anyone knows that you have the right to refuse any treatment that is going to be administered to you at a hospital in most instances.
 
These doctors. Any excuse to get their finger up your a***
I went to my doctor, and told him that there was blood in my stool. Guess what?
 
What I don't get why did he spend 3 days in the detention center??? maybe he was under some kind of influence....
 
Maybe they found him to be healthy with no brain injury. That means he hit them on purpose, so off to detention for him. :rolleyes:
 
From all the stories so far, it seems like he was competent enough to understand what they were going to do, why they were going to do it, and repeatedly deny consent. I think the hospital's fucked.
 
This is totally ethical and moral. If he had not survived due to the staff failing to recognize some damage, his relatives could have sued the hospital.
 
So you are saying the hospital was in a lose-lose situation from the get go?
 
I don't follow. Sometimes accident victims can be combative, but you have to do the exam for their own good.
 
spidergoat said:
This is totally ethical and moral. If he had not survived due to the staff failing to recognize some damage, his relatives could have sued the hospital.
Click to expand...

Not if he denied the medical opinion that was offered to him, which he did. I'm sure it would've been noted somewhere that the patient refused to have a rectal exam.
 
can i please bring so reality back to this debate. As i am studying paramedics we do a LOT on informed concent. Its the INFORMED that causes the problems in emergency situations. Take this for example

You arive at a car acident
There are 2 people in the car, a father and his young daughter
The daughter wasnt wearing her seatbelt because of whatever reason and was ejected from the car and killed on impact
The father who was driving had the steering wheel collom driven into his leg severing the femoral vain
The father seeing his dead daughter refuses ANY treatment

What do you do?


Another
A single occupant MVA
the occupant has probable spinal injurys and there is a chance he will never walk again
he has a deep lac to his abdoman
he refuses treatment when he realise he cant feel his toes because he doesnt want to end up in a wheel chair

Next case
you arive at an atempted suicide
you cut the patient down
the patient has spinal injurys but refuses treatment


Can the occupant in any of these cases give INFORMED CONCENT?

if you follow there wishes what will be the result of the coronors inquest?

according to ambulance guidelines NO they cant give informed concent and its your job to threaten, cadjule, anything to get that patient to agree with treatment. Futher more if you DONT the families will have a VERY strong suite against you and the ambulance service

Informed concent is not as easy as it seems to be at first glance, its very complicated. Yes it seemed on the surface like this this man could make an informed choice but none of us really know how he was in the A&E
 
The question is is it immoral, I say no. Is it legal? Perhaps, given what Asguard said.
 
Hhhhhmmmmm......

That depends if you like having your rectum plugged against your will or not.
 
spidergoat we dont just study the LEGAL aspects we also study the ETHICAL ones as well. Is it ethical to condem someone to death or a wheel chair because they arnt in a fit state to make a rational decision. Im not saying its an easy decision or even that the doctors did the right thing in this case but i am saying its not as black and white as everyone has made out. Yes i am as guilty as everyone else, it wasnt till i reread the thread this morning that i realised my mestake
 
He must have a really bangin ass.

Similar things happen to Serena Williams all the time. One time when she was accused of being a drug cheat they suddenly changed protocol and forcibly probed up her ass "in case she was hiding steroids with intent to distribute". Also she can recount many instances when, during routine medicals, the "mouth thermometer" mercury was "worn out" and it was "necessarry" to take her temperature via the rectal thermometer, when someone told her they were the same thermometer and that it's actually unheard of for mercury to inexplicably wear out, let alone common, she just slumped into her favourite rock hard chair, stared into the distance, and wept softly.

At which point her team of trainers and nutritionists said "quick! she's hysterical", before restraining her and checking the inside of her bottom for "hysteria-inducing microbes".

This is her life. Day in, day out. If you talk to her she's quite obviously demented from the abuse, and seems to just assume the ass is the centre of everyone's daily lives. That's all she knows.

Looks like this 38 year old construction worker is similarly cursed.
 
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