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The healthcare sector is guided by ethical and legal conduct. One of the key requirements is the rule of informed consent. In many cases, there are several options available to handle a given patient condition. Informed consent requires that the patient be allowed to make an informed decision based on the information provided and the situation at hand. The legal and moral principle of patient autonomy is the basis for informed consent. Voluntary informed consent is required for all medical tests and procedures. Failure to obtain informed consent leads to the battery, a legal and moral violation. There are several factors that determine the application of informed consent:
- The patient should be in capacity to make decisions.
- The medical practitioner should provide all the necessary information to facilitate informed consent.
- The patient must fully comprehend the information given, and lastly, they must give their voluntary consent.
The given case presents a situation where an elderly man requires urgent medical intervention but cannot provide informed consent. In this case, the elderly man’s condition has deteriorated, and the option available is putting him on a respirator. The elderly man does not satisfy any of the four principles of informed consent. He can barely communicate or understand the options before him. The decision belongs to his daughter, who has been frequent at the hospital. In cases where a patient cannot give informed consent, the next of kin is usually contacted (Scholten et al., 2021). In this scenario, the elderly man is a widower, further complicating the situation. In this case, the elderly man’s daughter has the legal right to decide her father’s clinical options.
The fiduciary relationship defines the patient-physician relationship in following three basic rules. To begin with, the patient’s interest should be given priority. This implies that the physician should consider the options that bring out patients’ wellbeing instead of the physician’s choices (Scholten et al., 2021). The second principle follows that the physician must exercise loyalty, and lastly, there must be an element of obedience. The physician must respect and obey the patient’s decision at all times. In this case, the nurses have given the necessary information to the daughter to facilitate decision-making. Therefore, they are required to listen to her decision and adhere to it. Besides, the daughter has been the closest family member to the elderly man. She knows what her father would want, and therefore her decision represents her father’s will.
In conclusion, although the eldest son claims that the doctors should do anything possible to save his father, the nurse should not take his opinion. This is because the eldest son is not named the legal next of kin to his father. Also, he has not been following his father’s medical condition closely. Any decision made by the son is based on his personal feelings rather than his father’s will. On the other hand, the daughter has been present in most of his father’s medical examinations. The closeness between the father and daughter implies that she has a better understanding of her father’s wish. Therefore, the nurses should follow the fiduciary relationship principles and informed consent by considering the daughter’s opinion and adhering to it. Since there is no law prohibiting the daughter from deciding on behalf of her father or recommending the eldest son’s opinion, the daughter stands to be the preferred decision-maker.
Reference
Scholten, M., Gather, J., & Vollmann, J. (2021). Equality in the informed consent process: Competence to consent, substitute decision-making, and discrimination of persons with mental disorders.The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 46(1), 108-136. Web.
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