Hospital row over vaginal checks

CLAIMS that medical students have been allowed to perform vaginal examinations on unknowing women under general anaesthetic have caused a storm in the French medical establishment.

The row started when free newspaper Metronews published a photo of an official document saying students at Lyon-Sud teaching hospital would learn about “clinical examinations of the uterus by vaginal manipulation and abdominal palpation” on “patients under anaesthetic” without saying that consent should be obtained.

Although the hospital says this has never happened, the medical dean admitted that asking for consent was not automatic and she told Metronews “I’m worried that at the point of asking, patients would refuse.”

Commentators such as medical blogger Dr Martin Winckler said this showed France was behind the times with the UK and other countries demanding a patient’s written permission for such examinations and many other procedures.

He told L’Express he could not fathom the dean’s “ethical shortcomings” because the question of consent was based on the fact that patients had the “right to refuse”.

Medical students at the hospital have told newspapers such practices do not exist and had not done so for at least the past 10 years – with many saying they were taught ethics early in their training.

One told L’Obs: “Gynaecological examinations can be performed by a student as much as by a doctor: but the patient is informed. Vaginal examinations are only done under these conditions, with the agreement of the patient.”

He added that such examination was never done by interns in the operating theatre.
Photo:Salim Fadhley (CC BY-SA 2.0)