Case study related to patient consent
A 23 year old lady, Mrs. Anna (hypothetical) was admitted to hospital following a crash accident in which she sustained severe injuries to her lungs. The violent of car accident resulted in collapsed lung and fracture of hands and backbone. Collapsed lung or pneumothorax is a condition in which violent force from car accidents breaks the rib and air collects in the space around the lung causing severe pain to patients. In such condition, there is also risk of suffocation and death in patients (Chetambath et al., 2017) . The patient was in a critical condition and she needed immediate surgery to improve her chances of survival (Shorten & Welsh, 2015). However, the dilemma in the case was that informed consent is needed from patient or their family members before going ahead with the surgery. However, Anna’s family members were not available to give informed consent. Her only close family member was her husband, however he died in the car accident. The next possible step was to taken patient’s consent before surgery. However, this was also a challenging task because Anna was constantly asking for her husband and she was not in a condition to take any additional trauma of hearing the death of husband.
Key questions related to the case scenario:
What is the major dilemma in the case scenario?
What is the most effective step needed by the clinician to avoid risk of death in patients?
What is the accurate strategy that can be taken by clinician to disclose the bad news about the death of Anna’s husband to the patient?
Reference
Chetambath, R., Parengal, J., Aslam, M., & Shivashankaran, S. (2017). Lung involvement in accident victims: report of three cases. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 5(9), 4167-4171.
Shorten, E., & Welsh, E. M. (2015). The diagnosis and management of pneumothorax. Veterinary Nursing Journal, 30(11), 319-326.
