The treatment by the family physician was unethical in various ways. First, the family physician failed to respect the patient's rights. Initially, the medical practice dictated that medical practitioners had the ultimate decision with regards to the patients' health. With the improvement of medical ethics, the patients are given the power of autonomy where they decision of treatment largely depends on them unless they are incapacitated to do so. The family physician takes samples from the patient for tests to determine if she has contracted gonorrhea. However, the wife is being treated for bronchitis. The physician, therefore, violates the patient's right by not explaining to her comprehensively why she is taking inappropriate samples from her despite the fact that her medical condition does not dictate so.
The second way in which the physician fails to practice in a manner that inspires ethics is by failing to get an approved consent from the patient. Doctors and any other healthcare professionals do not have a right or the authority to do any medical procedure on a patient without their approval. The patient should be respected in this regards because they are the people who are directly involved in the consequences that result from the treatment. The family physician treats the woman without her knowing the diagnosis taken on her. She is given antibiotics to treat the infection under the instruction that they are only as a precaution. A medical consent has three important characteristics including that it should be competent, informed, and voluntary. In this case, the physician treated the patient without informing them hence breaching the requirements of consent.
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HIV/AIDS presents a more complicated scenario because of the stigma associated with it. However, in the eyes of a medical practitioner, every disease is equal, and ethics must apply in an equal manner. The treatment of a disease like AIDS is complicated and eventually the patient, in one way or the other, might find out of their disease condition, and hence take a legal action against the physician for failing to inform them of their condition.
