Unconscious exams

Https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bkWhHP4ZuiM&pp=ygUTUGVsdmljIGV4YW1zIGFidXNlZA%3D%3D

It's really interesting topics about women health under anestesia and how was your opinion about that?

A few years ago I read in the news here serious allegations that, not so long ago, it was common practice in France for medical students to try their skills on vaginal and rectal examinations on unconscious patients! Most likely illegal but commonly done.

The patients were unconscious because they were going to have surgery, often for reasons unrelated to the vaginal or rectal examination. Thus the examination generally had no medical justification: they just wanted to train students with patients who would not object. Students who objected were told "how will you learn, then?".

@reddish Thanks for that commentary. No student should be put in a position to do some unethical. Good on the girl who refused to do the pelvic.

I mean that's so odd and twisted around it. From one side abusing, from other neglect women's and now are epidemic of infertility, endometriosis etc.

Look, for me I think this would be past my personal limits. It’s one thing to be nervous about being examined down there normally, but it’s completely different for it to be done while I’m unconscious. Unless it’s a surgery, which I would understand needs to be done under anesthesia, having a regular exam unconscious would feel really creepy because you have no idea what is going on. Maybe I’m just being overly cautious, I’ve read stories and articles about doctor misconduct and all that, so not knowing what’s happening while I’m being examined wouldn’t sit right, for both real exam and play exams.

There are situations in which individuals with considerable pain in an organ or region of the body might be examined under sedation but it would certainly be with their full knowledge and consent. Never in my career have I known a patient to be examined unknowingly while unconscious.

I would be uncomfortable with a Pelvic exam under anesthesia. It is morally wrong and should have the patients consent before doing an exam that could harm a patient in the long run.

Unconscionable except for an extreme medical necessity.

Grow up, people! To a medico who sees your ear and your clitoris as the same, human tissue, your body is all a specimen. Looking in one end (gyno) is exactly the same as looking into the other (dentist). How do you expect them to learn if they don't look? This "modesty" business is all in your head. And if you are asleep, it's not even there. Let them learn, or settle for less educated Doctors.

I couldn't disagree more strongly!

I’m all for patients VOLUNTEERING to let medical students observe or exam them as part of their training. Patients also have the right NOT to volunteer. Being used as a teaching aid while under anesthesia without prior consent is unethical, maybe even criminal. I would think if medical students were to examine an unconscious patient, consent would be documented with a disclosure signed by the attending physician and the patient.

This is a good article about med students told to do pelvic exams on unconscious patients at US teaching hospitals. Many states have enacted laws requiring consent, not sure if it’s required in all states. Apparently, these exams were common in teaching hospitals and supported by some administrators. They claimed patients gave implied consent by going to a teaching hospital.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/health/pelvic-medical-exam-unconscious.html

Except in the case of extreme emergency, as in the case of an accident, I would never accept to receive exams and surgery under anesthesia if I have not been explained and informed in detail about what will happen to me while I am asleep. The case of gyneacological cares is the same as other medical cares.

Seems if you agree to intimate exams while under anesthesia you’ve opened the door to potential abuse and things you don’t explicitly agree with. My advice, don’t do it!

Seems if you agree to intimate exams while under anesthesia you’ve opened the door to potential abuse and things you don’t explicitly agree with. My advice, don’t do it!

My brain knows it isn't a good idea and the ladies shouldn't do it, but the hand I jerk off with keeps typing and it really wants to encourage them to do it...

@GlamourousCeleste In France, can medical students perform teaching pelvic examination under anesthesia without written or verbal patient consent?

It was common practice for med students to do pelvic and rectal exams on women under general anesthesia. It never ceases to amaze me what men come up with and it was started when almost no women went to medical school. Violation of patients without consent and only some states have changed their laws. I am sure there are unethical things done to patients while unconscious.

For what it's worth--and this is one of a rare places I would reveal this--over my adult life I've allowed maybe a dozen doctors to bring in a resident to do a vaginal exam because I have a severely retroflexed uterus (tipped backward, toward the spine) that's unusual enough to warrant additional training. My doctors always ask before they even allow him or her to peek beneath the sheet, much less glove up and examine. The doctor always tells his trainee what to feel for and asks how it might impact things like the fitting of a vaginal ring or diaphragm, detection of fibroids or early pregnancy, etc.

Some day these OB-GYN residents will have a patient with this condition and they won't go in with zero experience--because I gave informed consent.

But having such an exam done when I was anesthetized would be a moral wrong at the level of unconscionable. You all know about the gynecological atrocities committed on slave women in the name of research, right? It's akin to that.

I believe, female or male, you end up naked when in surgery. They do say you leave your dignity at the hospital door but I do think that using a patient as a teaching aid without consent crosses a dangerous ethical line - doctors are not gods after all despite what some may think!

Using a patient as a teaching aid without consent is a step over the line of what is morally and ethically acceptable - after all victims of Nazi medical experiments did not give their consent, something worth thinking about............

My ife had a basic knee surgery about 40 years ago. They insisted that her underwear could not be worn. She has always suspected that it happened to her.

In most states now there are laws that strictly forbid this practice now. I believe it is still done but there are consent forms and such that must be signed.

During a recent minor procedure, she was asked about photos/videos/medical students and exams. She opted out of all of them. She knows people need to learn but is not comfortable with that consent.

My only two surgeries required no underwear and open access to my vagina…can’t imagine what else they did.

Do some update. Just talk with few peoples and I know that was used very often here. Officially to check up against women cancers which are often. However talk with friends and she told me that had been on local, uni hospital when she delivered her first child and was examined by six students

The issue is consent - in this case the lack thereof. It’s a problem. There is no medical need (for the patient) for the procedure and it wasn’t consented to.

@rigel Similar stuff was in the news some years ago in France - apparently it used to be the case that students were encouraged to do pelvic or rectal exams on unconscious patients (even, as far as I understand, if the pathology they were treated for had no relationship to the exam). Hospitals tried to deny it, then claim this practice had been discontinued long ago, etc.

I had a few gynecological surgeries. I always received a letter from the clinic before the surgery with lots of information about the surgery, to sign. I never read it carefully except once. Where I did read through it was a section where it was described how examinations are carried out by students for teaching purposes when you are under anesthesia. If you didn't actively check the box, this was definitely done. It was OK for me, as it was for learning purposes. But it was still a strange feeling to know that you could be examined like that and not realize it. As I'm sure many people didn't read this in detail, they were examined by medical students without knowing it because they had agreed to it.