Abstract
For many years now, a conscious consent of the patient to their medical treatment is fundamental for medical ethics. The patients’ acceptance is a confirmation of his autonomy here. Since the time when the issue of autonomy became a fundamental issue in the doctor – patient relationship, the concept of „autonomy” has been given numerous definitions. This text includes a number of suggestions of how to understand this concept. However, an elementary questions becomes vital: whether the autonomy applies to all types of patients to the same degree. Whether psychiatric wards’ patients, patients addicted to alcohol, drug addicts, patients serving a jail sentence are entitled to the same extent of autonomy as others. Whether they are capable of undertaking, together with their doctors, their course of medical treatment, whether they are capable of taking conscious decisions relating to their state of health and needs. Where are the limits of their autonomy, is their autonomy possible at all and to which extent?. It was only in 2009 that the legal regulations relating to the patient’ right for their personal life to be respected came into force in Poland. The summary of the text is a statement, that paternalistic approach of doctors to their patients is dangerous and that there is a need to reflect on the scope of autonomy of psychiatric wards’ patients.
Highlights
Among the questions accompanying the development of bioethics, patient autonomy is considered of utmost importance
Respect for patient autonomy is a fundamental justification of obtaining their assent to medical treatment
The obligation of respect towards a patient’s autonomy does not include those obviously not autonomic, and such is the case of many patients on psychiatric wards
Summary
Among the questions accompanying the development of bioethics, patient autonomy is considered of utmost importance. The first places himself among the continuators of Kant’s tradition of rational ethics, based on at least four assumptions: (a) it is reason that describes our moral choices, (b) the existence of reason is a necessary factor for being human, (c) everyone, irrespective of our position, must accept the recommendation of reason under the threat of exclusion from the community of intelligent individuals, (d) free choice means autonomy, that is following one’s own rules based on the acceptance of some reasonably justified imperatives. Respect for patient autonomy is a fundamental justification of obtaining their assent to medical treatment.
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