Patient Refusal Of Medical Treatment: Fill & Download for Free

We were called at about 3am to a familiar house in the Raploch for a chest pain. Now we suspected this was shite because I knew this characters medical history better than my own. When we got there we found the patient had called because she needed a light for her cigarette. Unfortunately, and purely by accident, my colleague put the defibrillator down on her tobacco tin and upset the lot. We were asked to leave (quite strongly) and we accepted this as a refusal of treatment.

This happened to me just his past week. I was presented with a patient who had a medical issue that absolutely required medical treatment beyond what is available otherwise and I could not convince him that without this treatment, he would become very ill and perhaps die. I stressed this repeatedly and did my best to explain why. Besides attempting to explain the process in a way I thought he could understand, I attempted another approach explaining it in a bit of a different way from a different angle. I offered to help him find another doc to give another opinion if he would be interested in that. In the end, he elected to “try his approach” rather than mine (actually the accepted treatment according to well-grounded information) and he decided to see how this works and will have another exam at another time……if he lives long enough. The deal is that we cannot make people do what we logically think they should do. We are unable to force any issue. Our job then is really to educate and give them the best information available to us and allow them to make an informed decision hoping that decision will be the best one for them. I ended our interview with best wishes and encouraged him to seek other opinions and even to google the information if that was available for him. In the end, that is really all you can do.

One of the very first thing they teach us in EMT class is that as long as the patient is conscious and alert and capable of making coherent decisions, The patient always has the right to refuse to be transported, regardless of who called 911 (forcing someone to go to the hospital against their free will is similar to kidnapping). Responding to a rescue call and having a patient refuse transport is pretty common. But, if you are unconscious or did something intentionally in an attempt to seriously injure yourself or others, then the choice is no longer yours. The law tells EMT’s that anytime someone is unconscious, we have what is called “implied consent”, meaning that the law makes the assumption that anyone who is unconscious would want (or need) to get medical attention at a hospital. But when I say that someone who intentionally injured themselves, I don’t mean accidents like a person playing 5 finger filet (where you put your hand out with fingers splayed and use a knife to hit the table or ground in between your fingers with a knife quickly while trying NOT to cut/impale their own fingers), I mean situations where an individual intentionally tries to do something that they know could result in a life threatening injury or death. So as long as your are conscious and alert as well in your right mind, you have the right to refuse transport. But if we think the illness or injury will soon cause you to become unconscious or not in the right state of mind, don’t be surprised if the ambulance crew stays with you for a while so that they can get you treatment by transporting you after you are unable to make that decision on your own.