Thursday, April 17, 2008 Editorials: The joke was not on Jan-Jan
THE video footage on the operation to remove a perfume canister from the anus of a certain “Jan-Jan” was uploaded in YouTube in February but was deleted in a few days.
That was the first sign that whoever did the uploading recognized the error.
While the video footage provided laughs and humiliated the then unidentified patient, it was more damaging to the team that did the operation and to their colleagues.
And for a reason.
Every medical practitioner knows about the Patient’s Bill of Rights, first adopted by the American Hospital Association in 1973 and revised in 1992.
That Bill starts off with: “The patient has the right to considerate and respectful care.”
Privacy
If that is not enough, the Bill has, among its many provisions, the following:
“l The patient has the right to privacy. Case discussion, consultation, examination, and treatment should be conducted to protect each patient's privacy.
“l The patient has the right to expect that all communications and records pertaining to his/her care will be treated confidentially by the hospital, except in cases such as suspected abuse and public health hazards when reporting is permitted or required by law.
“The patient has the right to expect that the hospital will emphasize confidentiality of this information when it releases it to any other parties entitled to review information in these records.”
Humiliation
It is not difficult to imagine why, in the case of Jan-Jan who is gay and whose case was unique, the situation easily deteriorated into something objectionable.
Medical practitioners and trainees, more so lead doctors, need a strong sense of emotional control when faced with a situation like that one that occurred at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in January.
And that emotional control is precisely a product of a thorough understanding of the need for professionalism in medical practice.
The humiliation, therefore, was less on Jan-Jan and more on the concerned medical team, the hospital and, had the YouTube footage not been deleted, on the country’s medical profession.
The perfume canister in the anus was not the joke; the medical team’s lack of professionalism was.
