Hi all


One of the highlights of the Diabetes UK conference in Glasgow earlier this year was a talk fom a man who had had a pancreas transplant and is off insulin altogether. Up there with the great and the good of UK diabetes docs he spoke of his illness and recurrent hypos. He spoke of the difficulties of his life before and after the transplant and of the antirejection tablets he had to take and the tests he had to have done. 

But he also spoke of the trememdous benefits of the treatment he had had. He was obviously an inspiring speaker and had been in his own field for many years. 

Perhaps a smaller organisation and more financial involvement would make a difference  ....


-----Original Message-----
From: GP-UK [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jenny
Sent: 20 October 2005 23:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Advice please


The conference is an accademic/medical conference and the intention is to
present a case study of the management of a detox of a patient with a very
serious, rare disease and complicated history.
 We are not "promoting" our services, or a product, drug or proceedure.

I think if a clinic were to present a recent audit of detoxes which has a
92.5% success rate on follow up the results would be interesting to say the
least to other professionals who may attend.
The other professionals may find it useful to talk to a patient who had
undergone treatment at the clinic, but in this case we were not intending to
discuss our audit so the role of the patient in attending would be to answer
questions about their own experiences, disease and personnal perspective.
The patient has not been involved in auditing so would not be able to
comment or interpret the statistics and therefore would be unable to say
whether the treatment was successful for anyone else apart from them.
(depending on what your measure of success is)
Our intention is not to advertise. We don't have the capacity to take more
work on anyway! (I might start having to get up before 10am in the mornings)
It is simply to inform and educate.

My concern was largely around the ethics of paying for the trip for the
patient as it is going to be expensive, (Is this OK?) and whether there was
any guidence about the confidentiality and consent issues.

Thank you for your advice though, I may well contact my MDU for guidence in
the morning  
Jen

On Behalf Of Julian Bradley

If a cosmetic surgeon who had a generally poor track record displayed 
before and after photos of one of his few successes, of a person he had 
paid to agree to have their photos used, and did not balance this 
appropriately with before and after pictures of failures who had been 
similarly paid, then I think there would be reason to be concerned.  To put 
it another way a patient or referrer persuaded by such techniques might 
well have grounds for a GMC complaint, and in the patient's case legal 
action, both of which might succeed.

I'm not suggesting any of this applies to the enquirer, but would stand 
behind the advice (if a doctor is involved) about speaking to a defence 
org.  I don't know about the details of the ethical rules that apply to 
nurses, but I'd guess that the legal principles still stand.

Julian
PS I thought (no real knowledge) that cosmetic surgery clinics got around 
this by advertising the clinic, while the individual surgeon ensures that 
they have fully informed consent once the patient arrives.  That always 
seemed tacky and unpleasant, but obviously not illegal or culpably
unethical.


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