• Der Anaesthesist · Jan 2018

    Review

    [Delegation of medical activities in acute pain therapy].

    • J Erlenwein, A Moroder, E Biermann, F Petzke, A P F Ehlers, H Bitter, and E Pogatzki-Zahn.
    • Klinik für Anästhesiologie, Universitätsmedizin Göttingen, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Robert Koch Str. 40, 37075, Göttingen, Deutschland. joachim.erlenwein@med.uni-goettingen.de.
    • Anaesthesist. 2018 Jan 1; 67 (1): 38-46.

    AbstractAcute pain management is an interprofessional and interdisciplinary task and requires a good and trustful cooperation between stakeholders. Despite provisions in Germany according to which medical treatment can only be rendered by a formally qualified physician ("Arztvorbehalt"), a physician does not have to carry out every medical activity in person. Under certain conditions, some medical activities can be delegated to medical auxiliary personnel but they need to be (1) instructed, (2) supervised and (3) checked by the physician himself; however, medical history, diagnostic assessment and evaluation, indications, therapy planning (e.g. selection, dosage), therapeutic decisions (e. g. modification or termination of therapy) and obtaining informed consent cannot be delegated. With respect to drug therapy, monitoring of the therapy remains the personal responsibility of the physician, while the actual application of medication can be delegated. From a legal perspective, the current practice needs to be stressed about what is within the mandatory requirements and what is not when medical activities are delegated to non-medical staff. The use of standards of care improves treatment quality but like any medical treatment it must be based on the physician's individual assessment and indications for each patient and requires personal contact between physician and patient. Delegation on the ward and in acute pain therapy requires the authorization of the delegator to give instructions in the respective setting. The transfer of non-delegable duties to non-medical personnel is regarded as medical malpractice.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…