[轉貼] 美國男子頭部受傷 醫生強行檢查他肛門

[nikko]

http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/080117/1/s01o.html

美國一名男子頭部受傷，醫生卻要檢查他肛門，他奮力反抗，醫生給他打麻醉針，然後把軟禁三天。這名男子對這家醫院提出告訴。


三十八歲建築工人（布萊恩）在工地發生意外，額頭受傷，到紐約一家教會醫院治療，急診室醫生要給他做肛門檢查，（布萊恩）拒絕並且全力反抗，幾名醫生將他制服，打針將他麻醉，強行給他做了肛門檢查，並把（布萊恩）用手銬銬在床上長達三天。醫生為（布萊恩）眉頭縫了八針，然後讓他出院。


（布萊恩）認為醫院強行為他做肛門檢查，而且非法居留他，因此對醫院提出告訴，但醫院卻說，肛門檢查是為瞭解（布萊恩）這次受傷，是否也導致他脊椎受傷，但（布萊恩）認為這種說法毫無道理，因此堅持提出告訴。

[nikko]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=368459

Construction worker sues over 'forced rectal exam'
Friday Jan 18 08:00 AEDT
By ninemsn staff

A New York construction worker is suing a hospital for forcibly performing a rectal exam on him after he was admitted for a cut face.

Brian Persaud, 38, visited the New York Presbyterian Hospital emergency room after he was hit in the head by a falling wooden beam.

After refusing a request for a rectal exam, Persaud claimed hospital staff held him down forcibly while he pleaded, "Please don't do that," Fox News reported.

He claimed he began flailing his arms, hitting one doctor until staff knocked him out with an injection — before completing the exam without his consent.

Persaud, who also received eight stitches to the cut above his eyebrow, reportedly woke up handcuffed to a bed with an oxygen tube down his throat.

Persaud later learned the rectal exam was a test to determine if he had suffered spinal damage.

Claiming he was "assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned," Persaud is claiming unspecified damages.

A hospital request to dismiss the lawsuit was denied, and an assault charge against Persaud was dismissed.

The trial is scheduled to begin on March 31.

[nikko]

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/forced-rectal-exam-stirs-ethics-questions/

January 16, 2008, 2:00 pm
Forced Rectal Exam Stirs Ethics Questions
By Sewell Chan

Under what circumstances can a patient in an emergency room be forced to submit to a procedure that doctors deem to be medically necessary? That question — and the notion of informed consent — is at the heart of a civil case that is about to go to trial in March in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Brian Persaud, a 38-year-old construction worker who lives in Brooklyn, asserts that he was forced to undergo a rectal examination after sustaining a head injury in an on-the-job accident at a Midtown construction site on May 20, 2003. Mr. Persaud was taken to the emergency room at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he received eight stitches to his head.

According to a lawsuit he later filed, Mr. Persaud was then told that he needed an immediate rectal examination to determine whether he had a spinal-cord injury. He adamantly objected to the procedure, he said, but was held down as he begged, “Please don’t do that.” As Mr. Persaud resisted, he freed one of his hands and struck a doctor, according to the suit. Then he was sedated, the suit says, with a breathing tube inserted through his mouth.

After Mr. Persaud regained consciousness, he was arrested, then taken — still in his hospital gown — to be booked on a misdemeanor assault charge. Gerard M. Marrone, who was Mr. Persaud’s lawyer, got the criminal charges dropped, then helped Mr. Persaud file a civil lawsuit against the hospital.

“Psychologically, it changed his life completely,” Mr. Marrone said of the episode. “He hasn’t been able to work. He has absolutely no trust in the system at all: doctors or the police. He has post-traumatic stress syndrome.” Mr. Persaud has been under the care of a psychiatrist who made the diagnosis, Mr. Marrone said.

After several years of legal wrangling, discovery and dueling motions, a State Supreme Court justice, Alice Schlesinger, this week refused to grant the hospital’s petition to dismiss the lawsuit.

The hospital is contesting the lawsuit. “While it would be inappropriate for us to comment on the specifics of the case, we believe it is completely without merit and intend to vigorously contest it,” said a hospital spokesman, Bryan Dotson.

In an interview today, Nancy Berlinger, deputy director at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute based in Garrison, N.Y., emphasized that she was not familiar with the specifics of the case but said it appeared to raise important questions about the doctrine of informed consent.

In general, patients may decline medical treatment if they are informed of the consequences of doing so and capable of making such a decision.
“There are special considerations in emergency medicine because of the need to make rapid assessments,” Ms. Berlinger said. “You could have an evident life-threatening injury — someone bleeding out of a carotid artery — or the potential for a life-threatening injury that you can’t see, such as a stroke or spinal-cord injury. It is not always clear what is the patient’s capacity to make decisions, especially if the doctor suspects a head injury.”

A jury or judge evaluating the case, Ms. Berlinger said, might have to answer these questions about the procedure: “Was it medically necessary? Was the patient capable of understanding what was going on and making a decision about it and understanding the consequences of refusal?”

To successfully demonstrate that the hospital was negligent, Ms. Berlinger said, the plaintiff would have to show that the treatment involved a departure from the “standard of care,” that the patient was harmed and that the harm resulted from the departure from the standard.

Lawyers for both sides — the hospital and Mr. Persaud — have lined up doctors to testify. In an Aug. 9, 2007, seven-page medical evaluation, Dr. Irving Friedman, a neurologist and psychiatrist hired by Mr. Persaud’s lawyers, wrote:

[nikko]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gn7nIqTvF7zSx6NAjqcHp5xD5AUAD8U731IG0

Man: NY Hospital Forced Rectal Exam
2 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — A construction worker claimed in a lawsuit that when he went to a hospital after being hit on the forehead by a falling wooden beam, emergency room staffers forcibly gave him a rectal examination.

Brian Persaud, 38, says in court papers that after he denied a request by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital emergency room employees to examine his rectum, he was "assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned."

His lawyer, Gerrard M. Marrone, said he and Persaud later learned the exam was one way of determining whether he had suffered spinal damage in the accident.

Marrone said his client got eight stitches for a cut over his eyebrow.

Then, Marrone said, emergency room staffers insisted on examining his rectum and held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that." He said Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around and staffers gave him an injection, which knocked him out, and performed the rectal exam.

Persaud woke up handcuffed to a bed and with an oxygen tube down his throat, the lawyer said, and spent three days in a detention center.

A request by the hospital to dismiss Persaud's lawsuit was denied by Justice Alice Schlesinger, who ordered a trial to start March 31.

Hospital spokesman Bryan Dotson said, "While it would be inappropriate for us to comment on specifics of the case, we believe it is completely without merit and intend to contest it vigorously."

Persaud's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, seeks unspecified damages. A judge dismissed a misdemeanor assault charge against him.