Informed Choice of Medical Services: Is the Law Just? by Marj Milburn

Author:Marj Milburn [Milburn, Marj]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138635555
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 34566793
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

the results of any procedures which have been carried out and the implication of these results;

the possible consequences of not taking the advice of the health worker;

the name, position, qualifications and experience of health workers who are carrying out the procedures (Legal Recognition and Protection of the Rights of Health Consumers, 1990; Consumer Health Rights: A Summary of your Health Rights and Responsibilities, undated, pamphlet).

In 1994 the Australian Consumers’ Council developed a draft Health Consumers’ Charter for the Public Advocacy Interest Centre. The mid-1990s also saw the Commonwealth Government, and a number of States, publishing charters of client rights that applied to public hospital services and, in some instances, public health services in general (Review of Professional Indemnity Arrangements for Health Care Professionals, 1995, paras 8.10-9.5). However, while client advocacy groups remain active, the far more powerful medical lobby generally acts to frustrate easier access to rights enforcement for health care clients.

Consequently, many people are expressing their opinion of conventional medicine and ‘the six minute consultation’ by taking a significant proportion of their health care business elsewhere. In 1993, in the United States, the number of visits to practitioners of complimentary medicine totalled 425 million compared to 388 million for primary care physicians. Eighty-nine per cent of people consulting alternative therapists were doing so completely on their own initiative. In Australia, 50 per cent of the population use some form of complimentary medicine as a direct result of their dissatisfaction with conventional treatments.6

In 1996, Roy Porter, medical historian, commented:

…scientific medicine at the cutting edge - medicine led by an elite that sometimes seems primarily interested in extending its technical prowess, with scant regard for ends and values, or even the individual sufferer, where patients are seen as problems and reduced to biopsies and lab tests, no wonder sections of the public vote with their feet, and opt for styles of holistic medicine that present themselves as more humane (cited in Moynihan, 1998, p.13).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.