Recently, the New York Times identified the Washington University School of Medicine as being one of a handful of elite schools that allowed its medical students to learn how to perform a pelvic examination by practicing on anesthetized women without previously receiving direct consent from the patients themselves.
A great deal of backlash arose as a result of the coverage, not only at WUSM but also at other schools mentioned in the Times, including the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California at San Francisco, and Harvard University. Since the initial report, the practice has been abandoned here and at Harvard, UCSH, and Tufts.
It is shocking and appalling that the nation’s leading schools of medicine could have for so long allowed-even encouraged-such procedures. Had media coverage not occurred, or had uncomfortable medical students not voiced their opinions and raised concerns, the practice might still be occurring at WUSM.
Effective since March 10, the consent forms at the medical school have been made much clearer. Where a patient was once told that medical students could potentially be performing certain tests under the direction of the supervising surgeon, they are now explicitly asked whether or not they will consent to a pelvic exam at the hands of a medical student.
While we commend the University for putting a stop to the practice, it must be noted that the matter should never have been an issue to begin with. When patients goes to a hospital for a surgical procedure, they do so because they know that we are on the leading edge of the medical field. Every day, patients trust their physical well-being to our institution. Unauthorized pelvic exams on unconscious women were a clear violation of that trust. At the very least, it is laudable the WUSM has ended the practice.
In fact, WU’s own Student Judicial Code would have classified the procedure as sexual assault, as would have any reasonable-minded prosecuting attorney. WU defines sexual assault as genital or anal penetration without consent. If a student were to have performed that same procedure on an unconscious, intoxicated woman, it would certainly have been labeled sexual assault. It is horrifying that when a WU teaching doctor ordered a medical student to do the same thing to an anesthetized hospital patient, it was instead labeled a pelvic exam. What is more, it is also an embarrassment that the practice went unquestioned before being brought to the attention of the public.
Beyond the idea that the exams should have never occurred, it also should not have taken an investigation by a world-famous newspaper to put a stop to the process. The national media should not be needed to oversee the medical school, at WU or anywhere else. WUSM should have internal procedures to make sure these kinds of things don’t happen, and if they don’t already, such procedures should be established immediately.
The brand of media attention brought upon WUSM by this controversy is highly embarrassing, and it is entirely fair to question how this was ever allowed to happen. Now that consent-free pelvic exams are no longer an issue, WUSM should take this opportunity to ensure that no similar procedures occur.
It seems common sense to say that a woman preparing to have gynecological surgery, regardless of how oblivious to pain she is, should not be considered, in essence, a convenient practice dummy for medical students. It is frightening that it took a wave of national backlash to make clear such a simple concept.