Pelvic Examination on Anaethetised Women

Pelvic Examination on Anaethetised Women

The issue of pelvic examination on anesthetised women without their consent and without their knowledge is raising its head again.

Women having surgery in University Hospitals, once asleep, and taking advantage of the woman’s vulnerability—as she lies naked on a table unconscious— a number of students carry out intimate internal examinations.

Women are not asked and no consent is given. In fact women will not know it’s even happened. Unconsented intimate exams on men and women are known to occur for training purposes and diagnostic reasons, mostly during gynecological surgeries but also during prostate examinations and abdominal surgeries.

This is an age-old practice that continues in med schools around the world. As unconscious subjects and they are used in ways that leave no physical signs. It is often undocumented in the patients’ medical records that such an examination has taken place.

Isn’t it time that Hospitals obtain explicit permission for student involvement in pelvic exams? Ask women for permission. It’s their body, their choice. Many physicians believe that nothing more needs to be said, arguing that patients “understand from the beginning that they are admitted for teaching purposes”.

Isn’t it time that the bodies of sleeping women are not ‘used’ by anyone without knowledge and consent?