Bill > S1771

Introduced Session

This bill provides that health care practitioners may not perform an invasive examination of a patient while the patient is under general anesthesia or otherwise unconscious without the patient, or the patient's authorized representative, providing informed written consent to the invasive examination. As used in the bill, "informed consent" means an affirmative authorization to perform an invasive examination, which authorization will not be valid unless the health care practitioner first provides the patient or the patient's representative with a full description of the nature and attendant risks associated with the proposed invasive examination. "Invasive examination" includes any visual, tactile, or mechanical inspection of the patient's reproductive organs, rectal cavity, or breasts. Informed consent may be provided verbally or in writing. Health care practitioners will be required to make reasonable efforts to obtain informed consent directly from the patient whenever possible. If a health care practitioner authorized to perform an invasive examination while the patient is under general anesthesia or otherwise unconscious determines that an additional invasive examination is required that is different in nature from the invasive examination to which the patient or the patient's authorized representative previously consented, the health care practitioner will be required to obtain a separate informed written consent prior to performing the additional invasive examination. These informed written consent requirements will not apply in situations in which the patient is unconscious or unresponsive and it reasonably appears that emergency treatment is needed to prevent injury or death to the patient, in which case the emergency treatment provided may include any invasive examinations as are necessary to evaluate and determine the appropriate course of emergency treatment for the patient. Nothing in this exception to the requirements of the bill will authorize the provision of emergency treatment in any case in which the practitioner knows or has reason to know the patient has executed a do not resuscitate order or has otherwise proscriptively refused emergency treatment. The bill additionally requires health care practitioners to obtain the patient's separate informed consent, both verbally and in writing, before performing any invasive examination for educational or training purposes that would take place while the patient is under general anesthesia or otherwise unconscious. When requesting separate informed consent to conduct an invasive examination for educational or training purposes, the health care practitioner requesting informed consent will be required to advise the patient of the exact nature of the invasive examination, of the estimated number of students and other individuals who will be performing or participating in the invasive examination, and that no medical care or treatment will be denied to the patient if the patient withholds consent to an invasive examination for educational or training purposes. The bill specifies that, if the invasive examination for educational or training purposes would take place during, or in association with, a medical procedure, the consent to the invasive examination is to be obtained independently of any other consent the patient provides for the medical procedure, and it is to be made clear to the patient that the consents are being requested for separate and independent purposes. Currently, many medical students are taught how to conduct pelvic examinations using the bodies of anesthetized, unconscious women. Although surveys indicate that between 70 and 100 percent of women expect their consent to be requested prior to a pelvic examination for educational purposes, in the vast majority of cases, women are not asked for, and have not provided, express consent to their bodies being used for teaching purposes. At least five other states, including California, Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon, and Virginia, have adopted laws prohibiting the practice of conducting pelvic examinations without obtaining separate consent. It is the sponsor's intent that, in order to protect the rights and bodily autonomy of all patients, and to ensure that trust remains a vital component of the patient-practitioner relationship, no examination be performed on a patient unless the patient has expressly provided informed consent to the examination.

AI Summary

Committee Categories

Fred Madden (D)*,  Paul Moriarty (D)*,  Shirley Turner (D)*,  Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D)*,  Andrew Zwicker (D), 

Passed Assembly (Passed Both Houses) (77-0-0) (on 01/10/2022)

Official Document