Category: Dr Judith Harvey
Dr Judith Harvey was a research scientist, ran the VSO programme in Papua New Guinea and taught in a Liverpool comprehensive school before going to medical school. She has been a partner, a salaried GP and a locum and an LMC chair. She started a charity which for nine years enabled medical students to go to Cuba for their electives.
Judith is a long-time supporter of NASGP and has been providing regular articles for The Sessional GP for over 12 years, her reflections ranging widely on practical, ethical and cultural aspects of health and medicine.
Is there such a thing as informed consent?
A patient and a doctor lying hand in hand on the operating table. That was what came to my mind as I browsed ‘Consent: patients and doctors making decisions together’, the GMC’s new guidance. Consent, it rightly says, is a process, and obtaining it is a partnership. But ultimately the dialogue has to come to an end, and then the patient is on his own.
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