The Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that hospitals must obtain written informed consent from patients before they undergo sensitive examinations — like pelvis and prostate exams — especially if the patients will be under anesthesia.
A New York Times investigation in 2020 found that hospitals, doctors and doctors in training sometimes conducted pelvic exams on women who were under anesthesia, even when those exams were not medically necessary and when the patient had not authorized them. Sometimes these exams were done only for the educational benefit of medical trainees.
On Monday, the secretary of Health and Human Services, along with top officials from the department’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Office for Civil Rights, sent a letter to the country’s teaching hospitals and medical schools denouncing the practice of doctors and students conducting the exams without explicit consent.
“The Department is aware of media reports as well as medical and scientific literature highlighting instances where, as part of medical students’ courses of study and training, patients have been subjected to sensitive and intimate examinations,” the letter said. “It is critically important that hospitals set clear guidelines to ensure providers and trainees performing these examinations first obtain and document informed consent.”
Unauthorized "pelvic examinations" (a medical euphemism for vaginal penetration) should be considered sexual assault and prosecuted as a sex crime. Undoubtedly only working class women were subjected to these outrageous assaults. Reports abound of women coming to with a stranger sexually assaulting them surrounded by leering medical students. It is something out of the 18th century. Again and again we observe the abuse and inhuman disdain for the dignity and rights of women at the hands of a contemptuous medical establishment that treats woman like cattle. Women are denied pain medication for extremely painful cervical procedures as doctors lie that they are "painless" and cruelly ignore women's suffering and complaints. ENOUGH!
I had no idea this was happening. To do an exam on a man or woman without their knowledge while under sedation is shocking and an incredible breach of trust.
It is unconscionable that doctors were performing medically unnecessary, invasive pelvic exams in patients under anesthesia without their consent. I have heard stories of women having procedures on other parts of their bodies, then waking up from anesthesia feeling pain or soreness in their vaginas and having no idea that they had been subject to several doctors taking the liberty of doing a pelvic exam. This is part of the general disregard for women in the medical industry. Glad this step is being taken, glad the NYT and other publications did reporting on this issue, because it is the equivalent of medical rape.
I was appalled (but not particularly surprised) when I heard about this in 2020. All this focus on consenting to even a flu shot but once you're out, you receive one of the most invasive exams a woman can experience without your consent or even knowledge, solely because some medical student needs to practice. This kind of invasion on an unconscious woman in any other setting would be immediately classified as sexual assault. But because it's in the hallowed halls of medicine, it's seen as completely acceptable. And these students are the physicians that treat and will treat us.… Read more
@MorbidCougarSocialist4wks4W
an unauthorized pelvic exam is rape
@VengefulLeftLaneGreen4wks4W
Good - this is way overdue. I'm usually happy to consent to allowing med students to do my pelvic exams when I'm there specifically for that. I always meet the med student ahead of time when they do the first pass at the medical history and all that and can suss out if they make me uncomfortable ahead of time. I have friends who are doctors so I understand the quotas they have to hit to finish training and usually don't mind helping when I'm informed and aware.
But if I'm not there for a pelvic exam and am under sedation or anesthesia, that is a huge violation of my bodily autonomy and is just gut wrenchingly wrong. It also bodes very poorly for the ethics of both supervising and trainee doctors if they partake in this - I wouldn't want to be one of their future patients.
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