Informed consent is a foundational concept necessary for ethical conduct of clinical research and practice. It is a technical tool that shifts the autonomy to decide whether a medical procedure should be performed-from the doctor to the patient. However there is an ongoing discussion in bioethical circles on the level of comprehension of the informed consent process by the patients and research...

The rule that a patient should give a free, fully-informed consent to any therapeutic intervention is traditionally thought to express merely a right of the patient against the physician, and a duty of the physician towards the patient. On this view, the patient may waive that right with impunity, a fact sometimes expressed in the notion of a right not to know. This paper argues that the rule a...

For at least 50 years informed consent in medicine has focused on the principle of autonomy. Recently, attention has been given to informed consent being a shared decision. A primary mandate to do what is in the best interest of the patient still remains. The shared view looks to expand beyond the dyadic image of doctor and patient, to acknowledge the essential contribution to be made to inform...