Please don't touch me there: the ethics of intimate examinations: Consent is crucial--but don't go too far, for students'  and patients' sakes

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7402.1326-a

BMJ 2003;326:1326 (14 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7402.1326-a

Letter

Please don't touch me there: the ethics of intimate examinations

Consent is crucial—but don't go too far, for students' and patients' sakes

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—I agree that patients' consent to procedures is crucial and should be achieved whenever possible and fully,or practice becomes poor and the doors are opened for harmto be done.¹

However, students must be educated, and with more and more studentsconsent is becoming an increasingly serious issue. We had tocatheterise a model in groups of four owing to too few patientsand too many students. If the opportunity arises for me toperform a procedure at the end of an operation I am observing,should I (a) turn it down as I don't have consent, (b) hopeI do get the informed chance before I qualify, or (c) waitto do it for real unsupervised at 2 am as a preregistration house officer?

I have assisted in a hydrocoele (I held a small retractor andcut sutures), and I . . . [Full text of this article]

Aneel A Bhangu, fourth year medical student

University of Birmingham Medical School, Birmingham B15 2TT aneelbhangu@yahoo.co.uk

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