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Informed Consent And Its Perilous Deception

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Informed consent is the process by which a patient is fully informed about all aspects of their healthcare and has the ability to participate in choices and make an apprise decision regarding their care. It is the legal right of the patient to direct what happens to them and the ethical duty of the doctor to involve the patient in their care. My final paper analyzes informed consent and its perilous deception. I shall present three main points against informed consent by arguing the complexity of the information given to the patient, the decision-making process and lastly patient competency.
To begin, there are four important pieces of information that the physician must tell a patient to ensure they are informed; the nature of the …show more content…

This study found that 69% of the participants failed to understand the meaning of randomization.
This type of misunderstanding increases with patients who have limited English proficiency.” (p.3)

Who should be responsible to ensure that a patient understands what they are signing? As in all relationships whether romantic, social, or physician-patient there is a responsibility that each person must have to secure a trusting rapport. In a physician-patient relationship, a patient must uphold to their responsibility of understanding their healthcare. They must be able to communicate their concerns, voice misunderstanding, and educate themselves. If the counter-argument of removing informed consent is the fear of taking away a patient’s autonomy then a patient placing their understanding in the hands of the physician implies that informed consent is ineffective. Informed consent foundation is built on the concept of a patient understanding the nature of a treatment or procedure in order to consent to it.
Which leads me to my next argument of the decision-making process. Corrigan writes “There are a number of contributions from medical sociology that draw attention to the complexities of decision-making, and render the medical encounter problematic by discussing the ways in which patients are often dependent on medical expertise and advice.” As stated previously informed consent essentially relies on the physician-patient

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