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...

INTRODUCTION Informed consent is mandatory for all (surgical) procedures, but it is even more important when it comes to living kidney donors undergoing surgery for the benefit of others. Donor education, leading to informed consent, needs to be carried out according to certain standards. Informed consent procedures for live donor nephrectomy vary per centre, and even per individual healthcare ...

Objective: To find out preoperative informed consent practice in a tertiary care public sector teaching hospital. Settings: General Surgical Units of Civil Hospital Karachi Design: Prospective observational study. Duration: January 2005 to March 2005 Patients and Methods: Patients who had undergone elective surgery were interviewed randomly during the study period under routine practice conditi...

The American physician is today besieged by economic and societal forces which conspire to weaken whatever equanimity he or she could once bring to the practice of medicine. In the latter realm, the threat of malpractice actions is ever-present. In this regard, negligence has long been the theory whereupon plaintiffs' attorneys seek to recover damages for patients' misfortunes in the medical sy...