Supplying a patient with a sedative to keep him calm, binding him to a bed to prevent him from moving, offering him benefits in return from accepting the orders imposed to him or underestimating the patient’s opinion when it comes to carrying out a treatment or an operation are some of the practices developed in Spanish hospitals to safeguard, in many cases, the safety of the patient and the sanitary staff. These actions are often necessary for a correct medical attention, but coercive chemical or physical measures can raise situations of infringement of the patients´ rights.
Getting to know the measures and criteria that are being applied, discerning the cases in which coercive measures must be used or not without braking the patients´ rights, determining how to control these measures or deciding if the consent of the patient and his family is necessary are some of the questions that a research team of the Universidad de Granada will try to solve. Their objective is to prepare general regulations about coercive measures and implement it in all the Spanish hospitals.
With this aim, they are going to analyse a series of suspicious cases in which physical or chemical coercive measured were applied in five national hospitals: the Clínico of Granada, the Carlos Haya of Malaga, the Hospital General of Asturias in Oviedo, Hospital Vall de Ebron in Barcelona and La Concepción of Madrid, with non-psychiatric patients. The research work, which started three months ago and will be finished at the beginning of 2007, will have a coordinator in each hospital and a member of the group will be in charge of analysing through surveys both the opinions of the patients and their families and of the sanitary staff of each hospitals.
A pioneering study
According to the supervisor of the project and professor of the department of Legal Medicine, Claudio Hernández Cueto –with the involvement of professors Francisco Torres and José Hervás as coordinators of the project- it is “a pioneering study” as up to now they had analysed coercive measures in psychiatric sick persons who are, because of the characteristics of their pathology, the most important application focus of these measures that prevent the patient from hurting himself or his family.
The scientist insists that in the medical practice there are coercive measures without negative consequences which are even necessary when it is impossible to seal with the patient, like anorexics, who are asked to eat in return for going for a walk. Despite this, the uncontrolled use of these measures can involve negative effects as, according to Hernández Cueto “a human being with full consciousness, intelligence and will can has the right to decide in all circumstances, including disease”.
The results of this study, which will be concluded in the middle of 2007, will be useful as a base to prepare a general report on the use of coercive measures that will be presented to the regional and national ombudsman to promote the creation of regulations for public hospitals.
Reference
Prof Claudio Hernández Cueto
Dpt Legal Medicine
Phone numbers. 958 24 99 29 (direct) / 958 243546 (Secretary´s Office).
E-mail. chc@ugr.es
