Is Coerced Voluntary Treatment Ever Appropriate?

Abstract

"Th e main argument against pressuring a patient into voluntary treatment is that this type of act is coercive, and that coercion is, prima facie, unethical. When a health-care practitioner holds a proverbial gun to the patient’s head in the form of imposing treatment, the patient is not free in any meaningful sense. Th is opinion of coercion is represented quite fi rmly in Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act (HCCA), which explicitly states that consent is not valid if it is not given “voluntarily” (see the Health Care Consent Act, 1996: s. 11). In this case, the argument would be that the consent given to agree to a treatment is not voluntary in any meaningful sense because it is the only choice being off ered, and failure to agree to that choice will result in the same treatment being physically imposed on the patient regardless of their initial wish. In this sense, the patient is coerced into voluntary treatment, which disrespects their autonomy and invalidates the consent given. Th us, the freedom of choice presented to the patient is fundamentally called into question as superficiality."(pg 2)