The nurse should take on the responsibility of informing the patient. The nurse should explain the procedure to the patient to best comprehend the information on the consent form. The patient has a right to know that her ovaries might be removed if necessary to help her survive the procedure. Normally, nurses cannot share information that contradicts the physician with patients without consent (Newman, 2016). The standards in health emphasize the importance between a physician and their patient. However, this move is necessary since the physician was consulted but had no interest in clarifying the misunderstanding for the patient. According to the nursing code, it is also the nurse’s role to ensure that no harm comes to the patient (Ong-Flaherty et al., 2016).
Informed consent does not necessarily refer to the form alone but making sure that the patient is aware of the procedure. This information should be conveyed by the physician in charge of carrying out the treatment. The principles of informed consent state that the healthcare provider has to disclose all information about the type of treatment, including possible risks and benefits (Dougherty, 2020). The health provider should also make sure that the patient fully comprehends everything in the form, and if not, they have to explain the information in a simplified manner for the patient (Dougherty, 2020). it is clear from the case that the patient was neither given full information about her surgery nor did the doctor bother to clarify the issues. This situation poses legal and ethical issues for the physician involved (Shearer et al., 2021). There is a high probability that the physician will get branded unethical by the medical board. If the procedure still happened without giving necessary information to the patient, both the physician and the nurse would be implicated by the law for malpractice (DuBois et al., 2019). Medical practitioners found guilty of malpractice end up losing their license to practice and tarnishing the name of the health facility.
References
Dougherty, T. (2020). Informed consent, disclosure, and understanding. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 48(2), 119-150. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12164
DuBois, J. M., Anderson, E. E., Chibnall, J. T., Mozersky, J., & Walsh, H. A. (2019). Serious ethical violations in medicine: A statistical and ethical analysis of 280 cases in the United States from 2008–2016. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(1), 16-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1544305
Newman, A. R. (2016). Nurses’ perceptions of diagnosis and prognosis-related communication. Cancer Nursing, 39(5), E48-E60. https://doi.org/10.1097/ncc.0000000000000365
Ong-Flaherty, C., Banks, A., Doyle, M., & Sharifi, C. O. (2016). The meaning of evidence and nonmaleficence: Cases from nursing. Online Journal of Health Ethics, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.18785/ojhe.1202.02
Shearer, E., Cho, M., & Magnus, D. (2021). Regulatory, social, ethical, and legal issues of artificial intelligence in medicine. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 457-477. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-821259-2.00023-5
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