Can the critically ill consent to participation in commercial television programmes? An Australian prehospital and emergency medicine perspective.

The fly-on-the-wall medical documentary is a popular television phenomenon. When patients can give appropriate consent to filming, the final product can be both educational for the public and rewarding for its subjects. However, in the dynamic world of emergency and prehospital medicine, consenting critically ill patients before filming is a significant challenge. The main barriers to gaining valid consent in the field and in the ED are limited time to inform the patient and the diminished capacity of the sick patient. Although there is an argument that involvement in a commercial film might be beneficial to several parties, including the patient, these benefits do not amount to therapeutic necessity if prior consent is not obtainable. Despite this, we still see acutely incapacitated patients featured in some television programmes. In these cases, the conventional process of consent might be being sidestepped in order to obtain permission for broadcast retrospectively. This alternative process fails to recognise that incapacitated patients require protection from an invasion of privacy that occurs when a crew is filming their resuscitations. This harm has already occurred by the time consent is sought. Ultimate responsibility for defending the patients' interests during their medical treatment rests with the medical practitioner. We argue that filming a patient without prior consent in both the prehospital and emergency environment is ethically unsound: it threatens trust in the healthcare relationship and might compromise the patient's dignity and privacy. Robust guidelines should be developed for all healthcare professionals who engage with commercial film crews.