Unconscious patients are being intimately examined by medical students without appropriate consent, new research from Dundee University suggests.
Hundreds of students at three medical schools were interviewed for the research conducted in conjunction with Cardiff University.
It found medical students are still being asked by senior clinicians to conduct or observe intimate examinations without valid patient consent, even after the problem was highlighted in an earlier survey.
In 2003, the British Medical Journal published the results of a survey at one UK medical school which showed 24% of intimate examinations of anaesthetised patients recalled by students had been undertaken without valid consent.
The new research, published in the journal Medical Education and funded by the British Academy, is anonymised and does not identify the medical schools involved.
It is understood no medical students from schools in Scotland took part, but that the research offers a snapshot of the general picture across the medical community.
Medical students need to learn how to perform intimate examinations and procedures in order to conduct them competently and safely for the benefit of future patients.
However, the research shows that despite the schools having developed comprehensive policies students are still being placed in the situation of conducting or observing intimate examinations without valid consent.
The researchers found most students still feel unable to refuse such requests.
“We suspect that this problem is common across the clinical workplace, affecting medical schools across the UK and elsewhere,” said Professor Charlotte Rees of Dundee University’s Centre for Medical Education.
“There are many factors playing into this, but among them our data suggests there is a cultural acceptability of students learning intimate examinations without valid consent within the clinical workplace that ultimately serves to legitimise and reinforce these unethical practices.
“We know from our findings that policy alone is insufficient to prevent ethical breaches involving intimate examinations in workplace learning. There is a gap between policy and practice which needs to be understood and tackled more effectively.”
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