The right to choose: A comparative analysis of patient autonomy and body integrity dysphoria among Czech healthcare professionals

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14110%2F24%3A00136918" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14110/24:00136918 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ebce-2024-0001" target="_blank" >https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ebce-2024-0001</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/ebce-2024-0001" target="_blank" >10.2478/ebce-2024-0001</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The right to choose: A comparative analysis of patient autonomy and body integrity dysphoria among Czech healthcare professionals

Original language description

he bioethical principle of autonomy is of paramount importance within medical practice. The extent to which a patient's autonomy overlaps or conflicts with the physician's duty of beneficence and non-maleficence, however, is not so clear cut, especially for those cases in which the patient's request for medical intervention goes against the physician's advice, either because of personal belief or because there is uncertainty regarding the therapeutic approach. Body integrity dysphoria (BID) is a condition that has been included recently in the International Classification of Diseases, 11th edition (ICD-11). It may lead an affected individual to develop an intense desire to remove a specific body part in order to restore congruity between their body and their mind. Thus, its occurrence creates challenging moral and ethical dilemmas for the medical world (Loriga, 2023). The aim of this study was to investigate how Czech physicians understood, assessed and supported patient autonomy regarding requests for invasive body modifications. The objective was to produce a blueprint regarding how much a patient could influence the medical treatment they could gain within the Czech medical system and to develop a comparison with the ethical challenges of BID. A five-section survey was designed and submitted to Czech physicians on topics relevant to the BID debate. On the surface, the results showed an apparent predisposition toward collaboration between doctors and patients. However, further investigation showed that this supposed collaboration crumbled as the physiological risk-reward ratio moved further toward risk, which caused physicians progressively to rely less on the patient's opinion and psychological needs. Moreover, a strongly authoritarian approach was evident, which became overwhelming in cases of amputation requests and removed, a priori, any collaboration. The results indicate that the Czech medical system does not accept or comprehend fully patients' psychological needs, and therefore the BID phenomenon is a long way from being understood, which requires a fundamental paradigm shift.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

30311 - Medical ethics

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Ethics & bioethics (in Central Europe)

ISSN

1338-5615

e-ISSN

2453-7829

Volume of the periodical

14

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1-2

Country of publishing house

PL - POLAND

Number of pages

20

Pages from-to

41-60

UT code for WoS article

001277144900003

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85195451030