A Discussion on the Judgment Regarding Damages from a Blood Transfusion to a Jehovah's Witnesses Patient

Abstract

  There is much in the literature about how to communicate with a patient refusing blood transfusion. The judgment passed down by the Supreme Court in 2000 was very important for the medical profession in treating a Jehovah's Witnesses patient. We were attentively reading the judgments of the Supreme Court and the Tokyo High Court which decided the original judgment, and investigated the points of changing a means of treatment for the patient refusing blood transfusion. Consequently we understood that it was respected to agree with refusal of blood transfusion for any reasons as the result of the sufficient discussion, and the policies on blood transfusion adopted by each hospital must be made clear to the patient at the beginning of medical treatment. The main points of this problem remain mostly unchanged but we need to manage them more strictly for blood transfusion.