Informed Consent/Med Dec Mking

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The ethical and legal obligation to seek a patient's informed consent prior to beginning any medical treatment or intervention is well known and has long-standing authority in law and in bioethics. This situation was not always the case. Informed consent for healthcare treatment, testing, or other interventions is more than simply signing a form; it is an ongoing conversation and a process of sharing information and making decisions. It can be done well or fail to result in truly informed or real consent. This course will examine the traditional ethical principles and framework behind informed consent and set its development within the historical context and the legal and medical cases that gave rise to it. Together we will explore the traditional ethical principles and approaches to informed consent, how they have been found to work, and whether/how they are challenged by or ought to be adapted for certain patient populations or medical situations. We will also consider models that have been proposed for medical decision making and information sharing and for the physician-patient relationship and the family-patient relationship. Finally, we’ll explore some of the educational efforts and methods that have been developed to teach medical professionals how to obtain informed consent and to educate patients about their right to consent – all with the goal that obtaining informed consent becomes more than pro forma.