Physicians and other professionals in the field of medicine have to perform invasive and non-invasive procedures on patients as part of their duties. There is a legal basis upon which these procedures are done; this is called 'informed consent.' Sociocultural factors have strong influence on the sick role. These factors influence the application of informed consent in Nigeria.

Kihlbom has recently argued that a system of seeking negatively informed consent might be preferable in some cases to the ubiquitous informed consent model. Although this theory is perhaps not powerful enough to supplant informed consent in most settings, it lends strength to Evans' and Hungin's proposal that it can be ethical to prescribe placebos rather than "active" drugs. This paper present...

BACKGROUND Treatment informed consent aims to preserve the autonomy of patients in the clinician - patient relationship so as to ensure valid consent. An acceptable method of evaluating understanding of consent information is by assessing the extent of recall by patients of the pieces information believed to have been passed across. When concerns are not satisfactorily addressed from the patien...

INTRODUCTION In settings with low literacy levels ensuring that participants are fully-informed before they consent to participate in clinical trials is a challenge. We explored the experiences and concerns of key actors in the informed consent process in two HIV clinical trials. METHOD Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 46 respondents including trial participants, research study ...

BACKGROUND The need to involve patients more in decisions about their care, the ethical imperative and concerns about ligation and complaints has highlighted the issue of informed consent and how it is obtained. In order for a patient to make an informed decision about their treatment, they need appropriate discussion of the risks and benefits of the treatment. OBJECTIVES To explore doctors' ...

The author summarizes emerging standards for informed consent as the underpinning of ethical research in humans.

Bioethicists have failed to understand the pervasively paternalistic character of research ethics. Not only is the overall structure of research review and regulation paternalistic in some sense; even the way informed consent is sought may imply paternalism. Paternalism has limits, however. Getting clear on the paternalism of research ethics may mean some kinds of prohibited research should be ...

The problematic nature of informed consent to medical treatment and research, and its relation to autonomy, trust and clinical practice, has been addressed on many occasions and from a variety of ethical perspectives in the pages of the Journal of Medical Ethics. This paper gives an account of how discussion of these issues has developed and changed, by describing a number of significant contri...