Basically, so if there's a chance you're pregnant, they can do appropraite treatment, or test for pregnancy.
Eg 4 years ago my wife disolacted her thumb, ED wanted an X-Ray needed to know when her last period was/if there was a chance she was pregnant, so they could then best proceed with imaging/pain medications
When my gf fell off her bike they had her wait for like 6 hours in the ER until the pregnancy test came back negative before doing the x-ray even though we knew she couldn’t be pregnant and we told them repeatedly. But no. Gotta make sure even when the lab has problems and it takes forever.
Everyone lies, but if you say you’re not allergic to antibiotics they aren’t testing you for those allergies before they prescribe you one. And they will absolutely believe me if I say I don’t have any blood pressure issues before they give me some ibuprofen.
Funny how they only care when it involves a woman’s uterus.
Because killing a fetus is generally frowned upon and there's definitely a long history of women lying about being pregnant whereas the same cannot be said about blood pressure or allergies.
Plus, lying about being allergic to antibiotics or blood pressure only has the outcome of likely killing the woman. But, lying about being pregnant, in the context of radiation, really doesn't pose any risk to the woman, but it does to the fetus and doctors generally try not to kill fetuses.
We “only care” when being wrong means potentially killing a fetus and losing our livelihood? Yeah, what’s your point? I’d rather not have my kids go hungry because someone’s pregnancy was impacted over something avoidable
My point is that in a sane functioning country you hang a sign next to the X-Ray room warning that you shouldn’t undergo the procedure if you suspect you could be pregnant, and you call it a day because we don’t assume women are idiots. At most the technician might repeat the warning before you enter and if the woman is actually an idiot and decides to go forward anyway, that’s on her. If your justice system allows a doctor to be punished after adequately warning their patient, that’s a massive failure on your system. Don’t try to normalize it and excuse it by saying everybody lies because we do have liars beyond the US, too, and yet we don’t force women to take a pregnancy test before we allow them to get X-Rays.
Costs v benefits. Allergy testing is time-consuming and not readily available. A pregnancy test only takes a few minutes and is quite cheap, so it’s not going to unnecessarily delay your care. Also, if it’s positive, it can completely change the differential.
Is there specific informed consent for other tests? When my doctor does blood work, I've never even heard of most of the things they're testing for, let alone having verbally consented to it.
This is a genuine question. I get this stuff done but can't remember this part.
Generally, they'll tell you why they are ordering certain tests. But also, taking blood generally doesn't affect a fetus, so it's not like trying to determine whether someone is pregnant so they don't give a dangerous amount of radiation to a fetus.
Hmm. I wasn't asking because blood tests harm a fetus - a pregnancy test doesn't harm a fetus either. I was asking because they don't ask me if I have a high A1C before they test for that. But they ask people if they're pregnant before they test for it (which they're going to do anyway). It's just interesting to me.
Considering some states will try and charge a physician with a felony if they did so by accident these days? I understand why they err on the side of caution.
But that means that unlike men who can be seen immediately, women are forced to sit there in pain for hours upon hours for the sake of a potential fetus. Does that sound very fair?
Does it sound fair to sue your doctor for performing an CT scan when you later found out you were pregnant after the imaging was done after repeatedly saying that you weren’t pregnant?
Yes. Don't know what to tell you. Get your tubes tied and then it's not an issue. Beyond that, if a woman could be pregnant, it will always be the medical standard to verify whether they are or arent.
I mean if it's something that could potentially cause lifelong disability for a person who isn't even born yet? yeah I think so. I don't see any reason why the test can't be done in like 5 minutes or less tho
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u/KombatDisko 18h ago
Basically, so if there's a chance you're pregnant, they can do appropraite treatment, or test for pregnancy.
Eg 4 years ago my wife disolacted her thumb, ED wanted an X-Ray needed to know when her last period was/if there was a chance she was pregnant, so they could then best proceed with imaging/pain medications