When I was an MS3, my VA attending had a rule: A rectal on every admission. Why? He had once missed a neurological injury that could have been caught with one.

Yes, patients have the right to refuse… and sure, if the plaintiff was competent at the time he can leave AMA.

BUT…

Anyone who will swing at you in the ER is baseline unstable. Period.

I know too many ER doctors, nurses and techs and clerks who have been assaulted because, “Mister Jones was angry and upset.”

Truly defensive medicine is when somebody has your 5′2″ nurse by the throat against the wall…

Anyone who thinks this guy should win his case… should be ashamed. You just said it’s ok to assault the very people (from the cop and medic to the nurse and doc) who put their lives on the line for you every day they walk into work.

I as a patient have the responsibility to listen to your “Suggested courses of action” and any tests you would “like” done or think would help. It is then totally 100% up to me which tests I consent to and it is my responsibility to deal with the reprocussions. I sign your form, do the tests I will consent to, and take the help you offer. You give said help and do your best. That is the way it is suppose to be…equal respect.

Basically, the doctors were trying to perform a reasonable test that might indicate a larger, more life threatening problem. I’m happy the courts saw that the doctors were trying to perform a thorough diagnosis/treatment on their patient.

A competent person can refuse treatment, even in an emergency setting. Hospital records describe Persaud as ‘alert and oriented’.

Don’t dismiss this case. It won’t be decided by doctors. I once sat on a jury in a malpractice suit. There was zero sympathy for the doctor, and the hospital involved.
It wouldn’t surprize me to see a settlement, before trial. that is Less risky for Cornell. You cannot second guess what a jury will do.

Persaud’s lawyer is hardly an ambulance chaser. He has represented Mafia figures, and got them acquitted. Beating the feds isn’t that easy.

Since my dad is a personal injury attorney, who has won many malpractice suits, I can say this.
High dollar attorneys do not pursue this kind of case, for five years, unless they have a great deal of confidence in winning. The hospital was hoping it would be dismissed. It wasn’t. We shall see. Never bet against a really smart lawyer. Remember Johnny Cochran.

There is no inconsistency. Unless policeman was there in the emergency room and reacted on his own accord, it was someone who did the examination who choose to call the police and press charges.

The story does not say what sort of devices were brought with this patient; but paramedics usually bring trauma victims in in immobilizing devices, and those devices are usually not removed until after a physical examination of the patient is done and sometimes not until after a CT is done as well.

That might be your personal opinion, but I very much doubt a court will find that anything illegal occurred or that the patient suffered compensable harm.

If for no other reason the argument of the greater public good can be made that emergency medical personnel should not be required to parse the elements of a comprehensive neurological examination done in a trauma care setting vis-a-vis consent and to have to decide whether each patient is competent to decide–rationally or not–whether particular steps in an examination can be done. Needing to clear a patient’s spine of injury in an acute setting requires respecting the timeliness with which that assessment must be done. It just isn’t practical to stop everything in a trauma code to go fetch release AMA forms so a patient can opt out of the rectal.

If this court is finding reasonably, then they will likely find that if you come to the hospital in a c-collar and on a backboard, then you have de-facto consented to whatever assessment is necessary to get you safely out of those devices. That goes for rectal exams, CT scans and any other reasonable examination techniques.

If our society wants an effective medical response to trauma, a balance of interests will have to curtail the notion of unlimited right to refuse evaluation so that first responders and ED responders can do their jobs without fear of unreasonable litigation.