Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: consent

  • Exploring capacity, consent, and confinement: A humanities-based approach

    Deema al YousufKathryn CobainShagun MisraDavid JeffreyWorcester, United Kingdom Background The UK’s Mental Capacity Act (2005) stresses the importance of patient involvement in the process of informed consent through shared decision-making.1 A workshop was held for forty-one first-year graduate medical students to raise their awareness of this Act. To stimulate their interest, an extract of Clive…

  • Letting go of logic

    Nimisha Bajaj Columbus, Ohio, United States   Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci. Photo by Paris Orlando. November 2019. Public Domain “He’s here for aspiration pneumonia. He doesn’t want a G-tube even though we tried to explain to him that if he continues to eat and drink by mouth, this will keep happening and he will…

  • How not to make the consultation sexy

    Claire Elliott London, Ukrain   A lecherous doctor taking the pulse of an old woman while fondling a young one. Coloured etching by T. Rowlandson, 1810. Wellcome Collection Why do patients allow physicians to carry out an intimate examination barely ten minutes after they have met? As John Berger wrote in 1967, “We give the…