Learning from informed consent litigation to improve practices: A systematic review

OBJECTIVE

To describe the reasons that lead judges to qualify malpractice as a lack of information, then rule in favour or not of the health professional (HP).

METHODS

We conducted a systematic review of case law relating to the breach of disclosure obligations over a ten-year period from 2010 to 2020. We used 3 legal databases: Légifrance, Dalloz and Lexis 360, all identified as the most exhaustive.

RESULTS

Of the 514 law cases included: judges found malpractice owing to lack of information in 377 (73.3%) cases. Among the latter, malpractices were lack of risk information (N = 257, 68.2%), lack of proof of information (N = 243, 64.5%) and/or lack of information on therapeutic alternatives (N = 49, 13.0%). These malpractices resulted in a conviction of the HP in 268 (71.1%) of the cases.

CONCLUSION

Case law is an important source of information for improving the quality of HP, lawyers, and judges' practices.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

This review suggests that.

The code of ethics for nurses

Nurses are ever-increasingly confronted with complex concerns in their practice. Codes of ethics are fundamental guidance for nursing as many other professions. Although there are authentic international codes of ethics for nurses, the national code would be the additional assistance provided for clinical nurses in their complex roles in care of patients, education, research and management of some parts of health care system in the country. A national code can provide nurses with culturally-adapted guidance and help them to make ethical decisions more closely to the Iranian-Islamic background. Given the general acknowledgement of the need, the National Code of Ethics for Nurses was compiled as a joint project (2009-2011). The Code was approved by the Health Policy Council of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and communicated to all universities, healthcare centers, hospitals and research centers early in 2011. The focus of this article is on the course of action through which the Code was compiled, amended and approved. The main concepts of the code will be also presented here. No doubt, development of the codes should be considered as an ongoing process. This is an overall responsibility to keep the codes current, updated with the new progresses of science and emerging challenges, and pertinent to the nursing practice.

The Implementation of the Sharia Law in Medical Practice: A Balance between Medical Ethics and Patients Rights

As medical ethics indisputably needs to consider patients' religious beliefs and spiritual ideas, one can suggest that hospitals are responsible for not only patients' rights and dignity, but also for her/his religious concerns and expectations. The current study is designed shed some light on the patients' view of the implementation of religious law in Iranian hospitals, specifically, the right of patients to be visited and delivered health services by professionals from the same sex. This protocol is proposed by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a response to the increasing demand for implementation of the religious law by Iranian patients. This research is a cross-sectional study which was conducted at four teaching general hospitals in Tehran, Iran. The data was collected by the means of a questionnaire distributed to 120 women who were admitted to different wards of the hospitals. These women were asked to express their opinion of the implementation the Same Sex Health Care Delivery (SSHCD) system in Iranian hospitals. All analyses were performed with the use of SPSS software, version 16.0. The results indicate that half of the hospitalized women believed that being visited by a physician from the same gender is necessary who advocated the implementation of SSHCD in a clinical setting; and most of their husbands preferred their wives to be visited exclusively by female physicians. This study highlights the view of the Iranian patients towards the issue and urges the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of the Islamic Republic of Iran to accelerate the implementation of this law. SSHCD is what the majority of Iranian patients prefer, and, considering patients' rights and the medical ethics, it should be implemented by Iranian policy makers.