The ethics of the relation between the convicted patient and the physician

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Approaching the convicted patient is a topical issue in terms of alignment with EU provisions and recommendations, more so in the context of year by year increase in the number of convicts and consequently, prison patients. The prison patient exhibits increased vulnerability in regard to the rest of the convicts due to his/her medical status overlapping personality changes induced, while coping with a new environment. This represents a challenge for the physicians involved in the expertise process, which must act objectively within the limits and by the principles of professional ethics, while confronting a patient influenced by the prison environment. METHODS: We studied the existing legal and ethical framework concerning the expertise in view of sentence postponement/interruption on medical grounds and made a comparison between the theoretical information available and the “real life” situations encountered in our experience at the Institute of Legal Medicine Cluj-Napoca. Following this step we tried to establish some principles needed to optimize health care in the penitentiary system by detecting and sanctioning situations of deceptive behavior, doubled or not by simulation and over-simulation. RESULTS: Convicts present pathologies documented in medical records, but accuse new symptoms that could suggest a new pathological condition. During the expertise, convicted patients emphasize their symptoms and/or claim new symptoms unrelated to their documented medical condition. Convicts submit repeated requests for which treatment solutions within the NAP healthcare system had been already formulated. CONCLUSION: The patient must be properly informed about the steps to be taken and duration expected in performing a legal medicine expertise in pursuit of sentence postponement or interruption for the treatment of a medical condition that cannot be properly addressed within the NAP sanitary system. Information should come from authorized sources. Efforts to determine unauthorized sources (mainly “experienced” detainees with records of unsubstantiated demands) are surely beneficial.