Patient Rights in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randle McMurphy is transferred from a prison where he was required to perform hard labor to an asylum for the insane. At first, he is delighted with the change, but McMurphy soon learns that patients like him who have been involuntarily committed to the hospital must remain in the hospital until the medical staff decides they are cured. McMurphy also learns that uncooperative patients can be physically restrained, given treatment with electroshock or even worse can be involuntarily lobotomized. The novel's tone is critical and allegorical. The mental hospital is a metaphor for the oppressive society of the late 1950s. Nurse Ratched is in charge of the ward and she, like society in the 1950s, requires conformity to established norms and has little tolerance for change or for anyone who questions the status quo.

Joel Braslow in The Western Journal of Medicine suggests that with the benefit of hindsight, medical decisions of the recent past including involuntary commitment of the mentally ill and medical practices incl

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atched and the doctors she works with are overworked and overwhelmed by an extremely high staff to patient ratio. Ratched and the medical staff place a high value on order and discipline. Uncontrollable patients classified as chronic pose troublesome clinical problems for doctors and can be a danger to themselves and to the hospital staff. Patients with certain types of mental illness require significant and disproportionate amounts of the staff's time, energy, effort and resources. One might even make the case that a chronic patient could compromise the care that the staff can give to acute but curable mental patients. In this environment, the medical staff of the mental hospital used a variety of tools and techniques as described in the book to maintain order including electro convulsive also known as electroshock therapy; mechanical restraints, and chemical restraints such as high dosage barbiturates. In spite of these treatments, some patients would remain uncooperative, unresponsive or combative. It was against this background that a physician's decision to perform a frontal lobotomy might be made. The decision to lobotomize Randle McMurphy was based as much on personal animosity and fear of a loss of control by Nurse
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Nurse Ratched, Randle McMurphy, Vertosick Discover, Journal Medicine, Doctor Braslow's, Rodgers Psychology, Beck Cowley, Cuckoo's Nest, Nest Hypothesis, Nest McMurphy, flew cuckoo's nest, flew cuckoo's, mentally ill, cuckoo's nest, nurse ratched, medical decisions, frontal lobes, medical staff, medical community, randle mcmurphy, geoffrey cowley newsweek, cowley 44, beck geoffrey cowley, cuckoo's nest patients, western journal medicine,
Approximate Word count = 1492
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)