Consent is essential in intimate examinations

Best practices in teaching and conducting intimate examinations may not always be followed. Coldicott and colleagues (p 97), accompanied by commentaries by Nesheim and MacDougall (p 100) and an editorial by Singer (p 62), discuss the challenges of vaginal and rectal examinations and report results of a preliminary survey of patients and student doctors. Up to a quarter of examinations with anaesthetised or sedated patients were done without adequate consent. Almost a third of medical schools in Britain had no formal policy on teaching vaginal examination and only one had a policy on rectal examination. Ethically informed training programmes must be implemented to ensure that patient volunteers, a cornerstone of medical education, are guaranteed respect.

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