Q) A 68-year-old Caucasian female who presented with fever, cough, and shortness of breath is admtted to the hospital. She has been admitted twice in the past 6 months due to right upper lobe pneumonia. Chest x-ray reveals right upper lobe pneumonia. A bronchoscopy is done followed by a biopsy, which is positive for an adenocarcinoma of the right lung. The patient's daughter makes a phone call to the physician from her office and requests information about the test results. The daughter mentions that she is the designated health care proxy for her mother. What is the most appropriate step at this point?
A. Refuse to give her the information
B. Discuss with her briefly about her mother's illness and tell her that she can obtain more information if she personally visits the hospital.
C. Inform her about the test results.
D. Explain to her that it would be unethical to divulge any information without prior permission from the patient.
E. Tell her to speak to her mother about the results.
Plz explain ur answers.
I think D is right because without patient consent is inappropriate to give information to her dauther.
D. a designated health care proxy is always accompanied by an authenticated document signed by the patient. Information about the patient should not be released until such document is tendered.
B is the correct answer, avoid giving details over the phone even though the daughter has a right to know since she is the designated proxy.
Docepsy, anybody can claim over the phone that they are designated proxies of your patients. There must be a proof before you release information. How are you sure that it was really the daughter that was on phone?
Agree with docespy it is (B)
alibi: a brief discussion about someone's illness need not amount to divulging scathing medical details.
Billl, the daughter will be coming to the hospital based on your promise of releasing the remaining information. Do you intend to seek the consent of the mother before telling her daughter when she appears in the hospital?. If you had already met the daughter before, then you are right to discuss with her. If the source maintains that option B is right, then no need to argue further.. Alibism
Right besides the point: Never trust completely even the source.
Anywayz, the source does have B as the answer and it does bring up your argument in the explanation.
When the daughter comes to the hospital, I don't right away throw all the info on her. I will first see if the mother recognizes the daughter, verify her health-care proxy status for her mom, and then begin divulging info...
Principles of Informed Consent:
1. Based on a doctor-patient interaction where the doctor provides necessary information to the patient to help the patient make a decision regarding care.
2. The patient should understand what the doctor says.
3. The patient has a right to choose a surrogate (health-care proxy) to make the decisions.
4. Consent to treatment plan can be signed by either the patient or the surrogate.
Billl, as you rightly said, even the sources should not be trusted completely. I still believe that it is not right to discuss our patients over the phone, no matter how brief, without verification of the callers right to know about the patient. Alibism