Vivienne Parry returns with a third series of Inside the Ethics Committee. She is joined by a panel of experts, who sit on clinical ethics committees, to discuss real-life medical cases.
Programme 3 – Can an unconscious patient be tested for HIV without his consent?
Danny was one of the most severely injured people to arrive at one London hospital after the London bombings in 2005. He lost both legs, an eye, ruptured his spleen and lost massive amounts of blood.
He was also severely injured by shrapnel and body parts from other people in the train carriage at the time of the explosion. While unconscious in Intensive Care a member of his medical team injured herself with a needle contaminated with his blood.
As he’s unconscious he can’t give consent to an HIV test. The medication the member of staff is taking prevents her getting HIV but is also making her very ill. She would like to stop. Danny is considered low risk for HIV.
Ethical issues
- Is it in Danny’s best interests to have an HIV test?
- If not, can he be tested solely in the interests of a third party?
- How are the interests of medical staff weighed against the patients they treat?
- At what point does a doctor’s duty to the people they treat end?
The panel
- Dr Dominic Bell, Consultant in Intensive Care and a member of the Anaesthesia and a member of the Clinical Ethics Committee at Leeds General Infirmary - Ainsley Newson, Lecturer in Biomedical Ethics at the University of Bristol and a member of the Clinical Ethics Committee at Royal United Hospital, Bath. - Deborah Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Medical Ethics and Law, St George’s Hospital London.
