“I think I ask 25 times a day, but I don’t even notice anymore.” It has been a long time since the question of consent was raised in the office of Dr. Marie Msika-Razon. This Parisian general practitioner did not wait for National Ethics Advisory Committee (CCNE) examines this notion change the way you perform medical acts to ensure that patient privacy is respected.
“The idea is simply to say: ‘Is it okay for you to go to the gynecological exam?’” explains the practitioner.
A detail that, however, quite radically changes the way of thinking about the medical act, which until now could, on occasions, give little consideration to the well-being of the patient.
“We were there to treat, so what we were doing was necessarily good,” Marie Msika-Razon explains to BFMTV in a self-criticism of her profession.
The newly appointed Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, asked the CCNE in July 2022 to comment on how to integrate the notion of consent into the practice of medicine. A petition made after the proliferation of testimonies from women who claimed to be victims of gynecological violence, and which led to an opinion of the organization published last March on the good conduct to be carried out.
Consent throughout the exam
In more detail, in March 2023, the CCNE issued, in the form of an opinion entitled “Consent and respect for the person in the practice of gynecological examinations or those that affect privacy”, its conclusions on this issue.
After listening to some thirty patients and professionals, the organization believes that it is now preferable to move from tacit or presumed consent to explicit and differentiated consent, particularly for the most intimate examinations.
“It means that we precede the exam with explanations, what it will consist of, why we are doing it, if it is likely to cause pain, discomfort,” Fabrice Gzil, a philosopher, member of the National Ethics Advisory, details BFMTV. Committee (CCNE).
According to him, these controls should continue “in the different stages of the examination”. “We check the compliance of the person on the different acts that are carried out,” he adds.
In this opinion, the CCNE also recalls that, on average, a woman has “between 50 and 80 gynecological consultations throughout her life.” Consultations “asymmetric by nature”, for which it is necessary to “respect the possible refusal” of the latter. It also recommends “the intervention of patients in the training of health professionals.”
On the medical profession side, requests from the National Ethics Advisory Committee are welcome. A guest this Tuesday morning on the BFMTV antenna, Dr. Aurel Guedj, an emergency physician at the Ambroise-Paré de Boulogne-Billancourt (AP-HP) hospital, recalls that “if certain gestures may seem banal to us, they are not. “.
“Throughout our training we are trained to deconsecrate the body and we forget about the perception of care that the patient has,” he recalls, adding that “what matters, and with the new generations that arrive, more and more is being taught It is not the nature of the care, but its perception”.
During this speech, Aurel Guedj welcomed “an evolution of morality” on this topic and encouraged his companions to “assume humility”. “When you see very old doctors, and the culture of the doctor who knows everything, you have learned to question yourself,” he says.
In June 2022, in a column published in the columns of Sunday newspaperhowever, several gynecologists had called to be “beware of great confusion” and called for a distinction between “medical examinations and rape.” With BFMTV.com, several of them had complained of a profession “complicated to exercise”.
Source: BFM TV
