The Importance Of Informed Consent

The Doctor and Patient relationship aspect of Medicine has changed drastically in the last twenty years. It has evolved from paternalism (the doctor makes the decision for the patient) to shared decision making where the patient is considered an equal partner in his/her own health related decisions. Informed consent is the cornerstone for this view. When a patient or a research subject makes an autonomous decision after understanding, the risks and benefits involved with the decision is Informed consent. Complete Informed consent covers the following components: competency, disclosure, comprehension and voluntary. Competency refers to the requirement for the individual to be of legal age and be mentally competent to understand the process.

The need by a medic or a physician to inform his or her patient of the required facts concerning a surgical procedure, or any procedure at that is always critical. Informed consent follows the principle that a physician has the duty to disclose all the relevant information to the patient, prior to treatment or services. Informed consent is obtained so that the patient is able to make a reasonable decision based on the facts presented. Along with the proposed course of treatment, the physician also offers alternatives to the patient (Hall & Bobinski, 2014).

Informed consent is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards. In order to give informed consent, the individual concerned must have adequate reasoning faculties and be in possession of all relevant facts at the time consent is given. Impairments to reasoning and judgment which may make it impossible for someone to give informed

In their article, “The Concept of Informed Consent,” Faden and Beauchamp give two varying definitions of informed consent, namely sense one and sense two. Sense one is defined as autonomous authorization, meaning that the patient or subject agrees and then gives authority to move forward with a proposal (Vaughn 191). The authors give four conditions that have to be met for informed consent to be recognized: the patient has to understand the information presented to her, there should be no manipulation or coercion, and she has to intentionally give her authorization (Vaughn 191). Faden and Beauchamp also note that the fourth condition, where the patient gives her authorization, is pivotal in this sense since it differentiates autonomous authorization

Informed consent is the basis for all legal and moral aspects of a patient’s autonomy. Implied consent is when you and your physician interact in which the consent is assumed, such as in a physical exam by your doctor. Written consent is a more extensive form in which it mostly applies when there is testing or experiments involved over a period of time. The long process is making sure the patient properly understands the risk and benefits that could possible happen during and after the treatment. As a physician, he must respect the patient’s autonomy. For a patient to be an autonomous agent, he must have legitimate moral values. The patient has all the rights to his medical health and conditions that arise. When considering informed

Every patient has a right to decide on their own course of treatment and freely consent to that treatment. In order to make an educated decision they must be provided with the proper information to make an informed choice (Opinion 8.08 - Informed Consent, 2006). It is the physician’s legal and ethical obligation to provide this information when making their recommendation on treatment. The choices given must be in accordance with good medical practice (Opinion 8.08 - Informed Consent, 2006). The informed consent is the legal policy, either written or verbal, that gives full disclosure of all the information including potential risks that is applicable to the patient’s condition and treatment being offered (Kazmier, 2008).

As per Beal & Lewis, 2014 Informed consent is a process of education and the correct education is a key to the ability to provide consent.

Obtaining an informed consent is a vital part of current health care. This document lists out several key pieces of information for both the patient, Provider, and the ancillary staff that also access the document during the procedure process. However, obtaining informed consent has not always been the practice norm and in research, informed consent carries different specifications.

The patient has the right to receive information necessary to give informed consent prior to the start of any procedure or treatment.

A physician who does not provide this to his/her patient may be liable for battery or negligence in the light of the doctrine of informed consent (Thorton 2000). As patients are entitled to this information, physicians possess a duty to disclose regarding risks and hazards, while performing the procedure or treatment as agreed with the patient. If the doctrine of informed consent did not exist, physicians would be able to perform medical treatments, procedures, without a patient’s consent or full knowledge of the perils of healthcare. In addition, healthcare demands trust which is necessary between patients and physicians in order to deliver beneficial health outcomes. If the doctrine of informed consent is not performed between the patient and physician, then trust diminishes resulting in poor health outcomes (Roach 2014). An example of deliberate harm due to uninformed consent exist in the research conducted in the Tuskegee experiment, where treatment was withheld and subjects were not informed of their illness or available treatments (CDC 2013) resulting in poor health and

How does a doctor confirm or measure that his patient has sufficient information and enough education to satisfy the legal standards of informed consent? It would seem that this would be nearly impossible or extremely difficult at best, given that most patients have a very limited knowledge and understanding of medicine. The challenge for the doctor is to find the middle ground between providing not enough information and too much information. I will discuss the Canterbury v. Spence case (the most influential and prominent court

Do patients read the Informed consent form?Ethics in Healthcare require patients to sign an informed consent. Many patients do not read the informed consent because they assume to know what awaits them, for instance, a patient waiting to go for operation bothers not to read because they will still go for the operation. The assumptions by health care providers that all know to read also make patients sign without knowing what is in the document while others do not understand the terms used. Finally, patients do not read this forms, especially during emergency situations since they do not have enough time to seek for the second opinion or go through the entire document.The Cordasco, (2013) notion that “an informed consent verifies that the provider

This situation is definitely linked to the term competence. Competence is basically the ability to deliver decisions about medical interventions. According to Vaughn, people who are incompetent in this sense cannot give their informed consent (Vaughn, 2013, P. 181). I agree with this because if my sister has Paranoid Schizophrenia she cannot give her informed consent when it comes to her health because she is not in the right state of mind to do so. according to an article I found in the Huffington Post mentally ill patients are like children, and they are not competent enough to make decisions for themselves, and they have to second guess all their decisions.

According to Teitelbaum J., & Pozgar G. (2015), informed consent is a legal concept that provides that a patient have a right to know the risk and benefits of proposed procedure. Patients have the right to refuse medical treatment. The United States Supreme Court recognized that all competent adults have the right to decline all forms of medical intervention, even treatments that prolongs life.

I found a interesting article in a scholarly article by Faden RR; Beauchamp TL; King NM, 1986. The article is called "A history and theory of informed consent". I chose to do this web report on the "Informed Consent" definition from Chapter 10. Informed consent is getting permission before carrying out a healthcare intervention on a patient. This article provides a historical and conceptual review of informed consent, and it provides the conditions in which such consent is obtained as well. A distinction is made between two concepts of informed consent. First is the informed consent which is defined in terms of the conditions of a particular kind of autonomous authorization and second is the informed consent where the nature and acceptability