Failure to Diagnose: Case Study
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Case Study - Failure to diagnose
Presenting Ethical Dilemma:
A Physician Assistant requests an Ethics Committee to help decide if a patient should be told that his terminal lung cancer was discovered two years ago, but not followed up for treatment.
Medical Indication:
A 30 year old married father of four children was just diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He was told last week that he has 6-9 months left, if perhaps a few months of chemotherapy and radiation are tried. The tumor is an Adenocarcinoma but too large for surgery since it has invaded thoracic structures.
He asks the Ethics Committee if the patient should be informed that a failure to diagnose had occurred.
Patient Preference:
The patient has both capacity and competency to decide, but we have no way of known if he would want to be told.
Quality of Life:
The ethical conflict is what the information about failure to diagnose will do to his remaining life. The patient's primary nurse tells the Committee that it would destroy his morale and will to live. The Physician Assistant believes the patient should be told, but isn't sure what it will do to the patient and his family.
In a legal case (Natason vs. Kline, Kansas 1986) the rule was that a Physician may withhold information based on "sound medical judgment" if it will detrimental effects on the patient.
Please see the attached.
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Solution Summary
This solution assists in evaluating the case study on a presenting ethical dilemma related to the failure to diagnose. Should the patient be informed that a failure to diagnose had occurred? This is discussed in 489 words.
Solution Preview
Please see response attached ("Posting 44240"), as well as the "case study draft" where I went through each section and jotted down the relevant information, a process that you will need to also engage in. You can use mine as an example. I hope this helps and take care.
Ethical cases have no right or wrong answers. The ethical requirements deemed necessary for all medical practitioners is such that the health professional must prove to the Ethics Committee that an in-depth decision making process based on the Cod of Ethics and Principles was involved in coming to the final decision. The subjective nature of this is quite apparent. The values and personal biases of the physician can potentially come into play (i.e., not tell the patient about the misdiagnosis, and say it was ...
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