On Telling Patient The Truth - Book Report/Review Example

The key element to be thought here is about the outcome of the process of telling truth to the patients about their disease. If it is giving a long term benefit for the patients, then lying cannot be considered as an immoral act. However, in cases of dreadful illnesses where complex medical procedures are involved, it would be the best option to give guidance to patients to let them prepare for the whole medical procedure and disease to follow in future. This is not as easy task as it sounds, as some individuals are emotionally weak and can end up being panicky and collapse on hearing such bad news.

The primary goal of any doctor is to save the life of a patient and in this path if he had to tell some lays to the patient it cannot be counted really as an immoral act. In the cases of dreadful diseases like cancer and HIV, where the life of a patient is at threat, a doctor may hide the truth just to give hope to the patient. The main concern of doctors is the fear experienced by the patients, if the truth about their medical condition is revealed to them openly. The fear of the unknown is considered as a terrible disease, and in such cases doctors are skeptic about what to reveal to the patients.

For example a patient has the right to know the side effects of the drugs he is consuming or a parent has the right to know whether their child is not hurt during vaccination. In all these cases the people caught in between are the medical professionals. In a crisis, a medical professional will look in for the betterment of the survival rate of a patient rather than measure the honesty and truthfulness in their attitude. There are some cases in medical field like cancer and pregnancies, where if the people are informed about the complexities can lead to fatal problems.

For example in the case of two young children, who was consoled that their mother will return after recovery was very excited to welcome her back home? But later found out that she was dead and instead another person was brought in her place. Here not telling the truth of the medical condition of their mother has left a beep emotional wound in the minds of the children It is very surprising that even the oath is very silent about telling the truth to the patients. According to the writer of ‘Decorum’ in Hippocrates corpus the physicians are warned of the danger and negativity in telling the truth about illnesses to the patients.

There had been many critic al views from Thomas Percival, Worthington Hooker, Richard Cabot, and Joseph Collins that telling truth is impossibility and can lead only to trauma and sadness to the patient and people related to them. The main argument by Henderson is that since telling the truth is impossible to draw a clear line between truths and false is a difficult thing. But the fact is that, it is impossible to tell the truth mainly because medical professional in many cases are not in a way to frame the main picture or understanding of a situation.

It is always not possible for patients to take decision upon themselves on medical conditions which they have less knowledge of. For example, if a patient calls a doctor in the middle of the night and enquires if he disturbed the doctor, a doctor will give a no for answer. Here the doctor is obviously not telling the truth, but for moral reasons he is hiding the truth. Honesty is