Volunteer Consent: Fill & Download for Free

No.Doctors should not manipulate anyone.The situation where patient A is in the hospital and dying of liver failure, while patient B gets brought in brainstem dead from a motorcycle accident, and the doctor thinks Aha! is pure fiction. Among other things, there is no guarantee of a tissue match.In my country, as well as the UK, there is a nationwide transplant service which coordinates donors and recipients. The demand for organs is considerably greater than the supply.It’s absolutely a disaster if a fit and healthy but brainstem-dead person dies and takes a healthy set of organs with them. Where a person has an advance directive, or carries a donor card, it’s usually fairly clear that the person wanted to donate their organs. Even so, if the relatives don’t consent, the organs will not be taken.Handled sensitively, when a person dies, their organs can bring great benefit to several other people, and this in turn can give great comfort to a grieving family. Often the recipient will want to express their gratitude by letter, or even in person, and this can be a very powerful thing for everyone.All of us who are involved in this process know what is at stake. Often families will volunteer consent. In that circumstance, we put them in touch with our local transplant coordinator, who does the consenting. They are experienced, sensitive and capable, and they do most of the talking.In a situation where the person is known to refuse their organs, or where the relatives object, that is accepted. We don’t try to talk people round, and we never, ever, try to coerce or manipulate people.There is a surprising number of people who would expect to receive a transplanted organ if they needed it, without being themselves willing to donate their own organs. I think this says something about human nature.

I can’t answer for all non profits, but I volunteer with the Boy Scouts and yes, they do background checks on all volunteers. Consent is required as well as forms on background information. These must be periodically renewed. They are just one layer of the protections the Scouts Organization works to provide. I imagine it’s similar elsewhere.

I have never heard of this. This is not a thing in modern America, as far as I know.Now, let me go look at this article:Despite these recommendations, the evidence we do have suggests that the practice is alive and well. In 2003, Ubel et al. surveyed 400 medical students from five medical schools in Philadelphia, 90% of whom admitted to having performed a pelvic exam on an anesthetized woman, although it was not clear how many of the women had consented to the exam.A similar survey at the University of Oklahoma in 2005 found that a large majority of medical students had given pelvic exams to gynecologic surgery patients who were under anesthesia, and that in nearly three quarters of these cases the women had not consented to the exam.Coldicott et al. published findings from a medical school in the United Kingdom in which students anonymously reported that at least 24% of intimate examinations they performed on anesthetized patients occurred without any consent and that ‘on many occasions, more than one student examined the same patient’.At my med school, we practiced on paid volunteers, both for pelvic and prostate exams. Those volunteers had been trained to teach us how to perform the exam. It was the best teaching possible. I never even considered that it could be done on anesthetized patients who had not consented to the procedure.Look, maybe people shouldn’t be prudish about the human body. But we live in a culture where they are. And people should have the right and the opportunity to decline pelvic exams from trainees. I for one can’t defend this practice, if it is done to teach regular pelvic exams. Schools could do what my school did and pay volunteers on whom medical trainees can practice.There is one instance in which I can see why obtaining consent ahead of time might not have been done. When you practice on healthy volunteers, everything you feel is healthy. But when someone undergoes a surgery, there might be a key exam finding that you weren’t aware of before that the trainees would really benefit from palpating, so as to be able to recognize it in future patients. In such instances, you might tell a med student or resident, feel this. This is what such or such finding feels like.But even then, if we made this a priority, it would not be impossible to consent patients ahead of time to agree to allow examinations for educational purposes if we encounter a key clinical finding.