Non Consensual Practice Essay

The doctor-patient relationship is a key feature of the practice and provision of quality healthcare. The relationship reflects the ---- of modern medical principles and is central when it comes to consensual practice. The present-day, expected relationship involves a sense of equality between the doctor and the patient; including a sense of autonomy for the patient. However this was not always the case. Armstrong describes the patient as “an identity created by doctors”, showing how the relationship was once seen and introduces the idea of non-consensual practice. Previously, physicians had shared the paternalistic view that ‘doctor knows best’. However, as times have progressed, this opinion has changed to that of the patients having a choice in their healthcare. This essay will examine different periods of history where non-consensual practice took place and how, through many different developments, it is now viewed as the unprofessional practice seen today.

During the 18th and 19th century the face of medicine changed dramatically. There was a shift in the medical world from the previously trusted Bedside Medicine through Hospital Medicine to Laboratory Medicine. Bedside Medicine was the original mode of production and, throughout this time, disease was defined as the external signs rather than the internal causes. Because of this, medical investigators looked at the first cause of illness and tried to find one common cure for all of them. During this era of medicine, the poor could not afford to employ bedside practitioners, and so the consumers of medical care were the sick portion of the upper class who paid with private fees. And it was this ill body of people that had all the control over the medical investigators. T...

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...ents and the implications this had on their operations. Nowadays it would be completely unacceptable for non-consensual practices. Originally the Nuremberg Code was meant to insure the idea of consensual practice but Pappworth refuted this belief and it was not until the introduction of HSMs, among other factors, that the idea of non-consensual practice was permanently dismissed. One would like to believe that, in present times, we could rely on trust to stop non-consensual operations; but realistically it is this empowering of patients, coupled with the decline in medical control, which explains why non-consensual practice is no longer permitted. The patient is more influential than in the past, and the walls between doctors and patients thinner, meaning Armstrong’s description of the patient as “an identity created by doctors” no longer seems that applicable.