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Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach

BACKGROUND: In Saudi clinical settings, benevolent family care that reflects strongly held sociocultural values is commonly used to justify overriding respect for patient autonomy. Because the welfare of individuals is commonly regarded as inseparable from the welfare of their family as a whole, the...

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Autor principal: Alfahmi, Manal Z.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9281037/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35831888
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-022-00808-6
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author Alfahmi, Manal Z.
author_facet Alfahmi, Manal Z.
author_sort Alfahmi, Manal Z.
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description BACKGROUND: In Saudi clinical settings, benevolent family care that reflects strongly held sociocultural values is commonly used to justify overriding respect for patient autonomy. Because the welfare of individuals is commonly regarded as inseparable from the welfare of their family as a whole, these values are widely believed to obligate the family to protect the welfare of its members by, for example, giving the family authority over what healthcare practitioners disclose to patients about their diagnoses and prognoses and preventing them from making informed decisions about their healthcare. DISCUSSION: Family dominance over the healthcare decisions of competent patients is ethically problematic when the family prevent healthcare practitioners from disclosing diagnoses and prognoses to patients who have the capacity to consent and make decisions in their own best interests. Thus, the author holds that sociocultural values ought to be respected only when they do not prevent competent patients from knowing their diagnoses and prognoses or prevent them from making their own decisions. CONCLUSION: Healthcare practitioners should not allow patients’ families to control what can or cannot be disclosed to competent patients. This is particularly important when patients are approaching death so that they may address their material and spiritual wishes—among other needs—as they prepare for death. Justification for this position is drawn from the Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach, from which it is possible to argue that the harm of withholding diagnoses and prognoses from patients who are imminently dying outweighs the potential benefits.
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spelling pubmed-92810372022-07-15 Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach Alfahmi, Manal Z. BMC Med Ethics Debate BACKGROUND: In Saudi clinical settings, benevolent family care that reflects strongly held sociocultural values is commonly used to justify overriding respect for patient autonomy. Because the welfare of individuals is commonly regarded as inseparable from the welfare of their family as a whole, these values are widely believed to obligate the family to protect the welfare of its members by, for example, giving the family authority over what healthcare practitioners disclose to patients about their diagnoses and prognoses and preventing them from making informed decisions about their healthcare. DISCUSSION: Family dominance over the healthcare decisions of competent patients is ethically problematic when the family prevent healthcare practitioners from disclosing diagnoses and prognoses to patients who have the capacity to consent and make decisions in their own best interests. Thus, the author holds that sociocultural values ought to be respected only when they do not prevent competent patients from knowing their diagnoses and prognoses or prevent them from making their own decisions. CONCLUSION: Healthcare practitioners should not allow patients’ families to control what can or cannot be disclosed to competent patients. This is particularly important when patients are approaching death so that they may address their material and spiritual wishes—among other needs—as they prepare for death. Justification for this position is drawn from the Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach, from which it is possible to argue that the harm of withholding diagnoses and prognoses from patients who are imminently dying outweighs the potential benefits. BioMed Central 2022-07-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9281037/ /pubmed/35831888 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-022-00808-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Debate
Alfahmi, Manal Z.
Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title_full Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title_fullStr Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title_full_unstemmed Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title_short Justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a Maqasid Al-Shariah-based Islamic bioethics approach
title_sort justification for requiring disclosure of diagnoses and prognoses to dying patients in saudi medical settings: a maqasid al-shariah-based islamic bioethics approach
topic Debate
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9281037/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35831888
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-022-00808-6
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