Medical Paternalism
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Medical Paternalism
Medical paternalism is a set of attitudes and practices in medicine in which a physician determines that a patient's wishes or choices should not be honored. These practices were current through the early to mid 20th century, and were characterised by a paternalistic attitude, surrogate decision-making and a lack of respect for patient autonomy. It is almost exclusively undertaken with the intention of benefiting the patient, although this is not always the case. In the past, paternalism was considered an absolute medical necessity, as there was little to no public understanding of medical procedures and practices. However, in recent years, paternalism has become limited and blind faith in doctors' decisions has come to be frowned upon. By the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, paternalistic medicine was increasingly seen as inappropriate in the West with guidance from professional bodies such as the General Medical Council indicating that it is ethically unsupportable ...
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Medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others. Medicine has been practiced since prehistoric times, and for most of this time it was an art (an area of skill and knowledge), frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, o ...
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Physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. Physicians may focus their practice on certain disease categories, types of patients, and methods of treatment—known as specialities—or they may assume responsibility for the provision of continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families, and communities—known as general practice. Medical practice properly requires both a detailed knowledge of the academic disciplines, such as anatomy and physiology, underlying diseases and their treatment—the ''science'' of medicine—and also a decent competence in its applied practice—the art or ''craft'' of medicine. Both the role of the physician and the meaning ...
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Patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health care provider. Etymology The word patient originally meant 'one who suffers'. This English noun comes from the Latin word ', the present participle of the deponent verb, ', meaning 'I am suffering,' and akin to the Greek verb (', to suffer) and its cognate noun (). This language has been construed as meaning that the role of patients is to passively accept and tolerate the suffering and treatments prescribed by the healthcare providers, without engaging in shared decision-making about their care. Outpatients and inpatients An outpatient (or out-patient) is a patient who attends an outpatient clinic with no plan to stay beyond the duration of the visit. Even if the patient will not be formally admitted with a note as an outpatient, ...
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Paternalistic
Paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority. Paternalism, paternalistic and paternalist have all been used as a pejorative for example in the context of societal and/or political realms and references. Some such as John Stuart Mill think paternalism to be appropriate towards children, saying: Paternalism towards adults is sometimes thought of as treating them as if they were children. Etymology The word ''paternalism'' derives from the adjective ''paternal'', which entered the English language in the 15th century from Old French ''paternel'' (cf. Old Occitan ''paternal'', as in Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese), itself from Medieval Latin ''paternalis''. The classical Latin equivalent was ''paternus'' "fatherly", from ''pater'' "father". Types ...
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Surrogate Decision-maker
A surrogate decision maker, also known as a health care proxy or as agents, is an advocate for incompetent patients. If a patient is unable to make decisions for themselves about personal care, some agent must make decisions for them. If there is a durable power of attorney for health care, the agent appointed by that document is authorized to make health care decisions within the scope of authority granted by the document. If people have court-appointed guardians with authority to make health care decisions, the guardian is the authorized surrogate. Background At the 1991 Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, the AMA adopted the report of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs known as, "Decisions to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment for Incompetent Patients." The recommendations of the report were the basis for amendments to Opinion 2.20 known as, "Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment." The report itself provides guidelines for physician ...
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Autonomy
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's own law" is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a (relatively high) level of discretion granted to an employee in his or her work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations. In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine. Sociology In the sociology of knowledge, a controversy over the boundaries of autonomy inhibited analysis of any concept beyond relative auto ...
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General Medical Council
The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public" by controlling entry to the register, and suspending or removing members when necessary. It also sets the standards for medical schools in the UK. Membership of the register confers substantial privileges under Part VI of the Medical Act 1983. It is a criminal offence to make a false claim of membership. The GMC is supported by fees paid by its members, and it became a registered charity in 2001. History The Medical Act 1858 established the General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom as a statutory body. Initially its members were elected by the members of the profession, and enjoyed widespread confidence from the profession. Purpose All the GMC's functions derive from a statutory requirement for the establi ...
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Josef Breuer
Josef Breuer ( , ; 15 January 1842 – 20 June 1925) was a distinguished physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work in the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., developed the talking cure (cathartic method) and laid the foundation to psychoanalysis as developed by his protégé Sigmund Freud. Early life Born in Vienna, his father, Leopold Breuer, taught religion in Vienna's Jewish community. Breuer's mother died when he was quite young, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother and educated by his father until the age of eight. He graduated from the Akademisches Gymnasium of Vienna in 1858 and then studied at the university for one year before enrolling in the medical school of the University of Vienna. He passed his medical exams in 1867 and went to work as assistant to the internist Johann Oppolzer at the university. Neurophysiology Breuer, working under Ewald Hering at the military medical school in Vienna, was the first ...
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Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in the Psyche (psychology), psyche, through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jews, Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Příbor, Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In founding psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (psychology), free a ...
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Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz ( ; hu, Szász Tamás István ; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1961) and ''The Manufacture of Madness'' (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him. Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not "illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are, and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases ...
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Voluntary Euthanasia
Voluntary euthanasia (VE) is the ending of a person's life at their request in order to relieve them of suffering. Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in recent years. Some forms of voluntary euthanasia are legal in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. Definition Voluntary refusal of food and fluids (VRFF) (also called voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, or VSED) or Patient Refusal of Nutrition and Hydration (PRNH) is bordering on euthanasia. Some authors classify it as a form of passive euthanasia, while others treat it separately because it is treated differently from legal point of view and often perceived as a more ethical option. VRFF is sometimes suggested as a legal alternative to euthanasia in jurisdictions disallowing euthanasia. Assisted suicide Assisted suicide is a practice in which a person receives assistance in bringing about their dea ...
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Patient Participation
Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to medical paternalism. Informed consent is a process where patients make decisions informed by the advice of medical professionals. In recent years, the term "patient participation" has been used in many different contexts. These include, for example: shared decision making, participatory medicine, health consumerism, and patient-centered care. For the latter context, i.e. patient-centered care, a more nuanced definition was proposed in 2009 by the president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Donald Berwick: "The experience (to the extent the informed, individual patient desires it) of transparency, individualization, recognition, respect, dignity, and choice in all matters, without exception, related to one's person, circumstances, and relationships in health care" are concepts closely related to patient participation. In the UK over the course of 2016 two new relevant terms have expanded in usage: Patient and Public ...
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